


Unholy Night

by Pinchetta



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: A Little Less Sixteen Candles A Little More "Touch Me" (Video), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Battle, Blood, Chains, Character Death, Crossover, Crying, Demons, Fall Out Boy Members, Fear, Fights, Fire, Friendship, Gen, Gore, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Knives, Pain, Physical Abuse, Souled Vampire(s), Suffering, Supernatural Elements, The Emo Trinity, Torture, Trauma, Vampire Brendon, Vampire Hunters, Vampire Pete, Vampires, Violence, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2018-02-07 09:02:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 45,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1893198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pinchetta/pseuds/Pinchetta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pete and his friends return to the blood-soaked town they left eight years ago to battle a vampire Master and the shit hits the fan. </p><p>**Violent 2013 sequel to the events in the video for 'A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More Touch Me"**</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Shadows

"Patrick…wake up…wake up!"  
In an ocean of darkness, Patrick tried to open his eyes for the distant voice calling his name but sleep felt too good right now. Deep, deep down in the muffled black void his body was sinking and nothing was real...

Then a punch hit his shoulder, jerking his brain back to consciousness and someone was shaking him as the comforting darkness morphed into blurry snatches of light. Rolling his heavy eyes open, he saw a dirty stone surface spinning hazily like a merry-go-round and a lurch of motion sickness hit his stomach. He tried to swallow but couldn’t, his mouth was as dry as cardboard and oh god, the spinning was getting worse. Screwing his eyes shut again, he tasted stomach acid and rolled blearily onto his side to puke, his guts heaving, but nothing came up. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember much of anything right now. 

Sensation slipped back into the rest of his body and told him that he ached all over with needles of hot pain throbbing in his neck, arms and head. The air was freezing cold and he was lying on a hard stoney floor that smelt of mold and piss. Where the hell was he?

"Hey!" the voice from before exclaimed and he recognised it now.  
"Andy?" he croaked, dragging his eyes open again to see his worried friend kneeling beside him. Everything had finally stopped swirling and a small dark room took shape around them in the dimness.  
"Welcome back," Andy sighed with relief, a small half-smile on his face, "How do you feel?"  
"Sick," Patrick mumbled, blinking hard as he tried to sit up. His muscles ached and his vision couldn’t quite focus. He didn't have his glasses. “Where are we?”  
Andy sighed and rocked back on his heels, scrubbing a tattooed hand through his short gelled hair. “Nowhere good,” he said quietly, reaching out to take Patrick’s arm, “Here, lemme help you.”  
Feeling as fragile as glass, Patrick let his friend pull him up into a sitting position against a rough stone wall that felt even colder than the floor. The damp chill of this place was seeping through his torn jeans and jacket into his skin and he couldn‘t stop shivering. His eyes were sore and he rubbed them with clumsy hands, flinching as slivers of pain shot through his forearms. “Can I assume we‘re in some kind of dungeon?” he sighed, looking around woozily.  
“Yep,” Andy confirmed, sitting down beside him on the floor, “And such a cosy one too.” 

The two of them were shut in a windowless grey cell with three stone walls and a fourth made up of dozens of iron bars running from floor to ceiling. The rusting metal door in the centre of these bars was obviously locked. There was no furniture in the cell and the only object was an old metal bucket sitting in one corner. No guesses as to what that was for. A single bare light bulb hung from the dirty ceiling providing a dim glow too weak to penetrate the inky darkness beyond the bars. Anyone and anything could be lurking out there.  
“Crap,” Patrick muttered, fear spiking in his heart as adrenaline woke him up completely. He quickly checked his jacket and jeans pockets and found them empty of weapons. Not even his penknife was left. “How did we get here?” he asked anxiously.  
“Beckett's goons captured us,” Andy answered, “I'm guessing we‘re underground, somewhere under his lair in those crazy tunnels Pete told us about.”  
“Catacombs,” Patrick corrected, running his hands through his short blond hair. It felt matted and damp and his heart began hammering against his ribs as panic flooded his body. He tried to take a deep breath and failed. The air stank of blood and sewage. “Where are Pete and Joe?” he blurted, “What happened tonight? Why can‘t I remember?” 

“One question at a time,” Andy said softly, peering into the shadows beyond the prison bars, “I don’t know where Joe and Pete are. I’m not even sure they’re still…” trailing off, he cleared his throat and moved on, “Tonight obviously didn’t go as planned. Even after all these years, Beckett knew we’d snuck back into town tonight. I don‘t know how but he knew, and he was waiting for us a few blocks east of our old base with an army of punk and dandy vampires. I guess the two gangs made a truce while we were away. Anyway, it was a total ambush. They took us out in seconds, even Pete, and he went down hard. I tried to fight, killed a couple, then got pinned down and thrown in the back of a van with you. The rest is history.”  
“Damn,” Patrick whispered.  
“Yeah,” Andy said bitterly, rubbing his bruised knuckles, “I dunno man, maybe we were kidding ourselves thinking we could just roll back into town after eight years on the road and kick the vampires out, just the four of us. We never defeated Beckett‘s gang back in the day so why did we think this time would be different?”  
Patrick sighed, hugging himself as cold shivers rattled ýhis bones, “I was barely old enough to drink last time we were here,” he whispered.

Staring at the floor, Andy leaned his elbows on his knees and rested his chin in his hands. “Assuming we ever get out of here I don’t think I can keep doing this, Trick. I don’t care what Pete says, vampire-hunting is a job for the young and reckless and I’m not feeling it anymore.”  
Patrick bit his lip as a fresh pang of fear slithered down his spine. He was still shivering and noticed for the first time now that Andy was not. “I only half remember the fight,” he said uncertainly, searching his cloudy memory.  
“You passed out in the van that brought us here,” Andy explained, “You’d lost a lot of blood, I’m surprised you remember anything at all.”

"Blood?" Patrick choked, his throat tightening, “How…?”  
Realization hit him like a slap in the face and he grabbed at his sore neck with trembling fingers and found the ragged bite-marks torn into his skin, sticky with dried blood. "Oh no, no, no,” he groaned, “Not again!” Yanking up his sleeves, he found four more fang-holes in his forearms, just starting to scab over and still bristling with pain. "They fed on me!" he cried, anger and terror exploding in his chest, "Why the hell is it always me? Do I taste like ice cream to them or something? Jesus! Oh please say they didn’t turn me, I don’t want to be a vampire! Do I have fangs?”  
"Relax, they didn‘t turn you, you’re safe,” Andy comforted, “They were just hungry I guess. I’m sorry dude. I tried to stop them but-”  
“It’s not your fault,” Patrick grumbled, spiralling down from full-blown panic into quiet anxiety and clenching his shaking hands into fists. His ribcage shuddered with the force of his racing heart and he couldn‘t take a full breath. Beckett’s minions had drunk his blood, eaten him like food, and he felt violated and sick, flashing back to the first time vampires had bitten him eight years ago. In this same cursed town. “Why weren’t Pete and Joe in the van too?” he asked tensely, “Where are they?”  
Andy shook his head, “Like I said I don’t know. Hopefully they got away and are gearing up right now to come and rescue us. Take a breath dude, calm down, it’s okay."  
“No it’s not!" Patrick snapped, “How is any of this okay?”

***  
Gritting his fangs so hard his jaw ached, Pete threw his body against the heavy chains holding him captive, pulling so hard that the iron cuffs cut into his wrists and neck but he didn‘t feel any pain, only fear. He had to get out of this place.

Hours had already passed since he’d woken up alone in the dark with his bruised body chained to a concrete wall and he was tired from struggling and starting to feel faint with hunger. As a vampire (even one who fought to defend humans instead of eat them) he needed to feed every night to survive and his strength faded the longer he went without the blood-substitute drinks that sustained him. Desperation gripped his un-beating heart as he pulled on the chains again with all his might, trying to tear them off the wall, his demonic eyes burning yellow and red. He had to get out of here before it was too late. Patrick, Joe and Andy could be anywhere right now and he didn‘t know what was happening to them. They could be hurt or dead or being tortured by Beckett and the thought of his friends screaming in pain while he rotted away in here was killing him. This was all his fault. He was such a fucking moron! 

Beckett must have sensed his presence somehow when they came back to town and set up an ambush for them. Coming back here was a suicide mission and Pete knew that now. Why had he let thoughts of revenge cloud his judgement again and again? 

Back in 2005 William Beckett, an ancient powerful vampire who ruled most of the town with his gang of dandy servants, had attacked Pete outside a college bar and turned him into a ravenous newborn vampire overnight. Beckett wanted a new minion, a pretty slave to feed with and fuck, but something went wrong in the transformation. Beckett and all the other vampires in town were cold-blooded murderous killers, but Pete wasn’t like that. He still had a conscience and a soul and didn’t want to hurt or murder innocent humans no matter how much his new body screamed at him to do it. So he fought his way free of Beckett’s gang and ran away, fleeing underground into the town’s sewer tunnels when the sun came up. 

For weeks he couldn’t understand what had happened to him, couldn’t cope with it, and he roamed the filthy sewers in a daze, crying and shaking, drinking blood from rats, on the edge of a nervous breakdown and hating the monster he‘d become. He didn’t want to eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t get warm or feel his heart beating anymore and he couldn't walk into sunlight without his skin bursting into flames. The new fangs in his mouth felt alien and cut into his tongue and he was so hungry but the only thing that tasted good to him was his own blood. The smell of all the humans walking around in the streets above him with gallons of fresh blood pumping under their skin called out to him like a delicious buffet. 

He couldn’t bring himself to hurt anyone to get the blood he craved so badly and tried to kill himself instead, but when he slashed his wrists open his vampire veins hardly bled at all and when he stole a gun, put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger, the bullet didn‘t kill him. It just hurt like hell. Out of his mind with fear and pain, he wept tears of blood as his vampire body starved and if Patrick and Andy hadn’t stumbled across him one night while hunting and taken him in like a stray he probably would have gone insane.

Eight years later, Pete punched the walls of his cell in frustration until his knuckles bled, pacing up and down as far as the chains would let him and glaring into the inky gloom beyond his prison bars. Even with his sensitive vampire eyesight he couldn’t see much of anything out there but the metallic scent of human blood was everywhere and it made him ache with hunger. "Stop it, stop it," he groaned at his stomach, scrubbing his cuffed hands through his hair as if he could shake the bloodlust out of his head. 

That bastard Beckett had stolen his entire life away and Pete knew there was no cure to fix what he'd been forced to become. He would never see his family again or walk in daylight or grow old with someone he loved and he wanted revenge on Beckett more than anything in the world. For the last eight years he had travelled across America with Patrick, Andy and Joe, hunting vampires from town to town and staking them into ashes, but Beckett was still alive and he was still winning. “I'll kill that bastard this time,” Pete growled to himself, imagining his hands around Beckett’s throat, imagining ripping the monster’s smug bowler-hatted head off. “I'll fucking kill him!”

"I don‘t think so," a menacing voice suddenly hissed from the darkness.  
Pete froze, literally, as the controlling psychic grip of a Master vampire's thrall seized control of his battered body and he couldn't move or even speak as William Beckett stepped out of the shadows and smiled coldly at him through the cell bars. "Well hello Peter, long time no see." Smirking toothily, Beckett stared at his captive for a long cold moment and then made Pete’s body kneel on the dirty floor before him like an obedient dog. Stepping closer to the bars, the Master vampire slid a sly, lustful gaze over Pete's angry face, watching him in amusement while Pete shuddered inside with revulsion. "I’ve got you now, you naughty boy," Beckett grinned, his yellow eyes turning jet black, "And those chains will make sure you never leave again." 

***  
Joe was completely at a loss. Tonight had turned from a promising hunt into a total clusterfuck and now here he was hiding out in the dusty old factory where he and his friends had lived and trained as Hunters, what, eight years ago now. The place apparently hadn’t been occupied since and he’d had to break through a boarded up window to get inside. Now he was alone, panicking, out of his depth, with only cobwebs and dusty furniture for company and his three missing friends might be dead. As much as he hated to admit it even to himself this was the most scared he had ever been in his life. Without Patrick’s planning, Pete’s leadership and Andy’s insane combat skills, he was just one human against a whole army of evil and the only reason he’d managed to escape Beckett’s goons tonight was because one sloppy vamp hadn’t seen the wooden stake hidden up his left sleeve. 

He had to rescue his friends but storming into Beckett's lair solo would be total suicide. He needed help from outside this demon-run town but who was he supposed to call? Ghostbusters? Hahaha. Shit.  
There was only one other group of vampire-hunters operating in this part of the country and Joe had crossed paths with them a couple of times on various road-trips. They were solid guys, born and raised in New Jersey, and their leader was pretty good friends with Pete…or was it Patrick? Joe couldn’t remember, but he didn’t know anyone else he could turn too. 

Searching frantically through the dusty papers in Patrick's old desk, Joe finally found a cell phone number for the New Jersey hunters and dialled it. The line rang for a long time and he paced anxiously around the warehouse with the phone pressed to his ear, praying that someone would pick up. At last a distant receiver clicked and a tired voice answered, "Hello?"  
"Hi. Um, can I speak to Gerard...please?”  
"This is he. What do you want?"  
"My name’s Joe. I’m a hunter. From Illinois. I’m friends with Pete Wentz."  
"Oh, that vampire who hunts other vampires? Yeah, I remember you guys. How come you’re calling me?"  
"We’ve got trouble here, man, like massive fucked up levels of trouble. Pete and the rest of my crew got taken by a kingpin vampire and I’m all by myself here. I need reinforcements ASAP. Can you spare anyone?”


	2. In The Dark

Andy was staring numbly at the dank dungeon floor racking his brain for any kind of escape plan, when the hushed tread of footsteps outside the cell made him jump out of his skin. "Look alive, someone's here," he hissed, jabbing Patrick in the ribs with his elbow. Patrick grunted and half-opened his eyes, his head lolling against the damp wall. He was still weak and woozy from blood-loss and kept falling asleep. “I don't see anyone," he yawned, squinting into the darkness.

"I bet you can hear me though,” a low youthful voice replied from the shadows.  
Andy instantly jumped to his feet and moved protectively in front of his injured friend. "Who's there?"  
"No one," the voice whispered, and something in the speaker’s tone made Andy realize who he was talking to. Backing away from the cell bars he demanded, "Show yourself, Brendon." 

Like most vampires, Brendon had no last name. He didn't need one. He had been bitten and turned into a vampire at the age of seventeen by William Beckett, not long after Pete was turned and ran away, and no matter how long he lived now he would look seventeen forever. 

Obediently, Brendon stepped forward out of the shadows and let the dim cell light fall over his face as he pressed it against the bars. He had large yellow-brown eyes and black hair and was as pale as a ghost. He was one of Beckett’s favorite foot-soldiers and was dressed in the tight gray jeans, scuffed boots and black jacket outfit that Beckett had a current fetish for. His hair was cut short at the back and sides and long on top. He looked like any normal teenager, except for the fangs. "Hey there hunters," he said flatly, "Nice to see you again."  
"The pleasure's all yours," Patrick snarked.  
“What are you doing down here?” Andy asked, his hands making fists as he tensed for combat, "Did Beckett send you to kill us?” 

Snorting with bitter amusement, Brendon glanced downwards and kicked one of the rusty bars. When he looked up again his face was deadly serious. "I don't have permission to harm you. But even if I did…” Trailing off, the young vampire glanced warily over his shoulder at the darkness behind him, “I just wanted to see if you were still alive and...whole.” He looked uncomfortable and nervous and Andy frowned suspiciously because he had never seen a vampire look anything other than bloodthirsty, bored or insane before. Apart from Pete.  
"What do you mean ‘whole’?" Patrick asked anxiously, tugging his sleeves down over his hands.  
“Nothing,” Brendon said quickly, "But listen I need to tell you both something important and I’ve got to do it fast. Just try to believe what I'm saying, okay?" The vampire’s eyes were two dark pools of sincerity as he wrapped his fingers around the prison bars. “You don’t know the horrors that go on in this place and you don’t want to. I can help you get out of here and get home but you’ve gotta help me first.”  
“You can't be serious,” Patrick said.  
“Why should we help you?” Andy snarled, “You’re Beckett’s lapdog.”  
“Hey, you have no fucking clue what I am!” Brendon said angrily, "I don't even-” the vampire suddenly bit his tongue and glanced anxiously around at the shadows again.  
“What the hell are you looking at?” Andy demanded, pissed off, “If you‘re not here to kill us then what are you doing?”  
“Shit,” Brendon swore, still looking over his shoulder at the impenetrable darkness and whatever it concealed. When he turned back to the cell his face had fallen and he sighed unhappily before mumbling, “Your friend is dead."  
"What?" Patrick asked, his eyes wide and scared.  
"I said your friend Joe is dead, okay?" Brendon snapped in a louder voice, stepping back into the shadows, "My Master captured him with you and killed him before you got here. Fuck this...” Swearing under his breath, the vampire turned and vanished into the gloom. 

“Beckett killed Joe?" Andy gulped, sinking to his knees on the floor, his mind reeling, "Joe’s gone? No, he can’t be...”  
"Brendon was probably lying," Patrick said desperately, “He’s a vampire, how can we trust him?”  
"Why would he lie?” Andy said hoarsely, blinking hard through salt water, “Beckett’s going to kill us all anyway, you know that.”  
"But…but why Joe? Why start with him?" Patrick stammered, his lips quivering as his eyes welled with tears, "I mean it wasn't his idea to come back to this god-forsaken town! None of this should have even happened...” Hiding his face, Patrick started to cry softly, his shoulders shaking with smothered sobs. Andy watched him helplessly through a mist of his own grief and shivered as the cold darkness closed in all around them.

***  
"I know you're there so you might as well show yourself,” Pete growled. Slowly, Brendon stepped out of the shadows and leaned against the bars of Pete's cage, looking in at him with curious eyes. "You’re the vampire who still has a soul," he said in an awed voice, “What does it feel like?”  
"Like candy and butterflies,” Pete snapped, “Go away, asshole. You’re Beckett’s pet, I don’t want to talk to you."  
"I‘m no one's pet," Brendon said defensively, "And in case you’ve forgotten you were turned by Beckett as well so whatever I am you are too. We have the same Master’s blood inside us, we have a connection."  
"No. We. Don‘t," Pete said through clenched fangs, “Beckett might have turned me but he is not my Master, Brendon, and he's not yours either. He's just a murderous psychopath who likes to fuck pretty boys.”  
Flinching, Brendon looked at the floor. "You shouldn't talk like that,” he whispered, “It could make things worse for you."  
"It’s a little hard to care at this point," Pete snarked, holding up his chained wrists, "And why are you hiding down here alone? Vampires are pack animals, even I know that."  
"I'm not hiding," Brendon said quickly, "My Master is just…busy. He might even be torturing your friends right now. Can you smell their blood?"  
With a roar of rage, Pete threw himself at the bars and Brendon jumped back in fear. "You had better be lying to me! Because if Beckett hurts any of my friends in any way I will kill that rat-faced sonofbitch myself and then I’ll come after you!" 

Struck with genuine fear, Brendon ran off through the dark dungeons back towards the exit stairs which led out to the old vampire lair above. He could still feel Pete's vengeful gaze burning into his back as he fled and he wanted to kick himself for not telling the other vampire the truth but it was too late now. It was always too late. Pete had killed dozens of Beckett's crew in the past and Brendon didn't want to end up like them, he didn't want to die. Being turned into a vampire had felt like dying and he still had nightmares about it every single day.

When Brendon became a vampire it hadn’t taken him long to realise he was different from the other monsters working for Beckett. The other vampires cared for nothing and no one but themselves and they murdered innocent people freely, rejoicing in the blood sprays and craving the kills, but Brendon felt sick at the sight of so much gore and he still cared about a lot of things, especially the innocent people who were being hunted down like animals and fed upon each night. He knew that vampires were supposed to be demons walking around in dead skins: soul-free, guilt-free monsters; but he wasn‘t like that at all and he didn’t want to hurt anyone. For every second of every night he was terrified that Beckett would find out he was different and rip him apart. 

The only other exceptional vampire Brendon had ever heard of was Pete Wentz and he wanted more than anything to run away like Pete had done but he couldn't. He was tied to Beckett like a dog, a prisoner of his Master’s whims and lusts, and he wasn’t strong enough or brave enough to flee on his own. He knew in his dead heart that he never would be. So every night he went out and entered a world of bloodshed and nightmares, and every night he pretended to enjoy it as much as the other vampires did while deep down he hated it all and was just as terrified as the poor helpless humans he chased down and bewitched into letting him drink their blood. Unlike the rest of Beckett’s dandies, Brendon wasn't capable of direct murder and even though he acted as mad and bloodthirsty as the others who drank their prey to death without a care, he only took a little bit of blood: just enough for Beckett not to suspect him but not enough to do any permanent harm. When he took his blood-stained fangs away from his victim’s necks and felt them still quivering with life and pain in his arms, he whispered in their ears: "Don’t move, don’t scream. I'm going to let you go so fall down and pretend you’re dead until we're gone...” 

In the eight years Brendon had been a vampire he hadn’t killed a single living person that he knew of and saved as many as he could, but he hated himself for not being able to stop all the other vampires from killing and he knew he was playing a hopeless risky game. At any moment he might be discovered as a fraud and if - when - Beckett found out he was helping humans instead of eating them there would be hell to pay. He would be ripped limb from limb or staked on sight. It was only a matter of time.

Then suddenly, tonight, out of the blue, Pete and his human hunter friends had rolled back into town after years away and Brendon had seen his chance to escape at last. He had snuck into the dungeons tonight to tell Pete and his friends the truth and ask them to accept him but at the last second his courage had once again failed. Beckett’s presence was everywhere in this evil place, lurking in every shadow and hiding behind every door, and Brendon couldn’t bring himself to risk telling the truth out loud so he had lied about Joe being dead instead. Besides, he thought miserably, Pete would have never believed him.

“There you are!”  
With a squeak of fright, Brendon skid to a halt as Beckett melted out of the darkness right in front of him.  
"Master! I...I’m sorry, I just wanted to see the prisoners."  
“I didn‘t give you permission to see them," Beckett said archly, baring his long white fangs, "I told you to stay upstairs in my chamber and I've been looking everywhere for you."  
"I'm sorry Master, I didn't think you'd mind..."  
"Do you think I’m stupid?" Beckett snapped, seizing Brendon’s arm and yanking him close enough to spit the words in his face, "Do you think I don't know why you're really down here, you lying little shit?"  
“I don’t know what you mean,” Brendon stammered, fear gripping his throat.  
Beckett's eyes blazed like fire in the darkness. “Oh I think you do.” Sliding a white-gloved hand over the crotch of Brendon’s jeans, the older vampire stroked him through the tight denim. Sick to his stomach, Brendon cowered meekly while his Master touched him and fell into mindless panic over what might happen next.

With a savage jerk Beckett crushed Brendon’s balls in an iron fist and then struck the teenager's face when he cried out in pain. “Shut up you little traitor! I’m going to make you wish you'd never been born!” 

***  
Snarling and raging, Beckett dragged Brendon up the dungeon staircase and through the lair, ignoring his other minions who were sat around drinking and playing cards, until he had hauled Brendon up to his private tower where he slammed the door and threw the kid at the nearest wall. Pain crashed through Brendon’s body as he hit the stone bricks and then the floor but he barely had time to feel the impact before Beckett was on top of him, choking him with one hand and ripping his clothes off with the other.

“Wait!” he gasped desperately, begging, pleading, “Master, please, I can explain!”  
“SHUT UP!” Beckett roared, “You can explain nothing! I own you, Brendon. I own you for eternity and you will do what I fucking say or so help me I will end your miserable existence in the most painful way imaginable!” Tightening his grip on the young vampire’s neck, Beckett yanked him upwards and then smashed the back of his head into the stone floor. Agony exploded in Brendon's skull and Beckett released his hold only long enough to stand up and start kicking his pet boy viciously in the ribs.  
“I see everything you do, Brendon,” he bellowed, “I know everything you think! There’s nothing you can keep secret from me, NOTHING!”  
“I‘m s-sorry,” Brendon sobbed, clutching his aching head as blood seeped through his fingers, “I’m sorry, Master, s-stop!”  
“What the hell is wrong with you?!” Beckett roared, kicking him harder, cracking ribs, piercing flesh, “You should be thanking me for punishing you and begging for more!” Licking his fangs, Beckett bent down and wrapped his fingers in Brendon’s hair, pulling the sobbing teenager to his feet.

Half-blinded by the pain in his head, Brendon could only whimper as Beckett pinned him to the wall and drew a sharp steel dagger from his belt. “You ungrateful little bastard! After all I’ve done for you, you want to run off with Pete and his human pigs? Traitor!”

Stabbing and clawing, Beckett beat his vampire offspring until he begged for mercy and then hit him even harder. Half-conscious and choking on his own blood, Brendon bit into his own arm to keep from screaming as crimson tears rolled down his bruised cheeks and Beckett slashed long stinging cuts across his torso, making crosses of blood. “You belong to me, Brendon!” the monster roared, “You will kill people and you will like it and you will dance in their blood if I tell you to! Understand?” Weeping with pain, Brendon sobbed that yes he did understand but his Master kept hurting him like he would never stop. 

***  
“We must’ve been down here for hours,” Andy muttered to himself, breaking a long exhausted silence in the cell, “I know I’m still straight-edge but fuck I could really use a drink right about now.” Scratching his beard with cold fingers he looked up at the cobwebbed ceiling and sighed, watching his breath mist in the static air. He had been lying on his back on the stone floor for a long time, letting the damp chill seep into his bones and make him more and more numb, thinking about Joe. The weak gloomy light made his eyes hurt and he really needed to pee but he didn‘t want to use that disgusting bucket in the corner. He hadn’t cried yet, couldn’t even shake off the shock of finding out his best friend was dead, but grief weighed heavy like an anvil on his chest, crushing him into the floor. The world outside this awful place would be darker and lonelier without Joe in it. 

Sighing miserably, he wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands and tried to remember what optimism felt like. “Patrick, what time is it?” he asked hoarsely.  
No answer.  
“Dude, I know you have a watch. Is it dawn yet? Patrick?”

Concerned, Andy sat up and looked around. Patrick was slumped on the floor by the wall with his eyes closed. His pale skin had turned so white that even his lips had lost their colour and he looked like he was barely breathing. Worried, Andy scuttled over to him and shook his skinny shoulder. “Patrick, hey! You alright?”

Moaning sleepily, Patrick blinked open dazed puffy eyes. “What?” he mumbled, “Did I miss breakfast?”  
“Huh? No, we’re still in Beckett’s dungeon, remember?”  
Frowning, Patrick sat up stiffly and glanced around in puzzlement like a lost little kid, “Oh.”  
“How are you feeling?”  
“Cold. Kinda dizzy.”  
“You look terrible." "Thanks." "Seriously dude, you need food and water, maybe even a blood transfusion, I don’t even know how much those bastards took out of you.”  
“I’ll survive, don‘t worry about me,” Patrick said with a weak smile, leaning back against the wall, “But I wish Pete and Joe were here.”  
Wincing, Andy swallowed the hot lump of sadness in his throat, “Yeah, me too.”

Two sets of footsteps abruptly sounded in the darkness, coming towards the cell, and Andy stood up and braced himself for whatever horror was coming their way. He didn’t have to wait long before two burly vampires in suits and bowler hats appeared dragging between them a male prisoner, half-naked and covered with blood. The prisoner's hands were shackled together in front of him and his head hung limply, hiding his face. One of the vampires unlocked the door to the cell and they threw the new arrival inside without a word before slamming and locking the door again and walking away. 

Holding his breath, Andy waited for the guards’ footsteps to fade completely before exchanging a puzzled glance with Patrick and warily approaching their new cell-mate. It was a skinny white guy lying face down where the guards had dropped him and Andy could already tell it wasn’t Pete or Joe because of the lack of tattoos. Bruises and fang marks pitted the newbie’s naked back and blood was matted into his black hair. Andy felt sick. Very cautiously he used one of his booted feet to roll the unconscious prisoner over and see his face. “Shit!” he gasped, scrambling backwards.  
“What?” Patrick cried.  
“It’s Brendon,” Andy blurted, staring in disbelief at the vampire’s battered face. Brendon's closed eyes were bruised black and blood was running from his nose and mouth. A lump the size of an egg was rising on his forehead and his cheekbones and jaw were purple and swollen. His body and arms were criss-crossed with wide bloody cuts and horrific contusions around his ribs betrayed several broken bones. Patrick crawled over to see the damage for himself and let out a low whistle. “Holy smokes. Why would they do this to one of their own?”  
Andy shrugged and sat back down a few feet away. “I don’t know and I don‘t care.”  
“It doesn’t make sense,” Patrick frowned, tiredly pushing hair out of his eyes. “Back in the day it always seemed like Brendon was Beckett’s favourite.”  
“If that’s true then I’d hate to see the way Beckett treats people he doesn’t like.”

The wounded vampire's eyelashes started to flicker and he moaned faintly in his sleep. “Fuck!” Andy swore, scooting further away and dragging Patrick with him. “Hey, take it easy,” Patrick scolded, “He’s in handcuffs and he can’t use his thrall to bewitch us when he’s this badly hurt. He’s hardly a threat.”  
“Hungry vampires are always a threat. He needs to drink blood to heal his injuries and who do you think he‘s gonna take it from, huh?”

The young vampire groaned and coughed weakly before rolling onto his side and puking a puddle of sticky crimson all over the floor. Trembling and sniffling small breathless sobs, he struggled to sit up, looking around in panic and obvious pain to see where he was. When he spied Andy and Patrick staring at him he relaxed, but only a little.  
“What the hell, Brendon?” Andy asked in exasperation, “What happened to you? Actually, no, forget that question. Tell us where Pete is!”  
Brendon wiped his mouth on the back of his cuffed hands and slumped down onto his back on the dirty floor. “Hell if I know,” he mumbled through bruised lips, “And don’t gloat about this, man. I don‘t w-wanna hear it.”  
“Aw, but it’s so tempting,” Patrick said darkly. 

“Tell us what's going on right now or I‘ll kill you!” Andy demanded, “If this is some kind of trick-”  
“Does this look like a trick to you?” Brendon growled, wiping his teary eyes with curled fingers and smearing blood across his cheeks, “It’s a punishment, dumbass! I’m being punished for not doing what Beckett wants. I guess he thought it would be funny to lock me up with you two.”  
“If you attack us, I’ll kill you,” Andy warned.  
Grimacing with pain, Brendon nodded slowly, “I know. I don’t want to hurt you guys, really I don't, but Beckett has powers, he could get into my head without even being here, control me, make me do bad things. I w-wouldn’t be able to stop myself!”  
“That‘s the most pathetic excuse I‘ve ever heard,” Andy said stonily, “Please drop the poor little victim act because it is not flying with me. We’re not going to feel sorry for you. You’re a killer for crying out loud!”

“But I’m not!” Brendon sobbed, “That’s what I was trying…w-what I wanted to tell you before. I’ve never killed anyone myself. I let them go, I always let them go! You don’t see it, because nobody sees it. I have to keep it secret, have to pretend, have to m-make it look real because Beckett’s always watching... but now he knows! He knows and h-he’s punishing me!” Red tears rolled down the vampire’s bruised cheeks and his broken voice was getting louder and louder, almost hysterical, “Don't you get it? I’m like Pete, I don’t wanna kill! I never have and I didn’t ask to be a m-monster! I didn't want this shit, I never asked for any of this! I was just a kid and he bled me dry and made me fucking undead!”  
“Shhhh,” Andy hissed, “You’ll probably bring Beckett down here if you don’t stop screaming.”  
Sobbing angrily, his fangs bared, Brendon curled up in a ball, bones poking through his bruised skin as he wept hard enough to make himself sick.

For a while Andy and Patrick just stared at him in morbid fascination. Neither of them had ever seen a vampire cry before, not even Pete, and they had no idea vampires cried tears of blood instead of water. It was Patrick who finally spoke up. “Okay, let me get this straight. You think you’re like Pete in that you still have a soul and conscience and you‘re basically a good misunderstood guy blah blah blah, but why exactly should we believe a single word you're saying? Your vampire buddies killed our best friend tonight so why the fuck should we trust you? Answer me that!”  
“Huh?” Brendon gulped tearfully, “Oh. Oh shit, no your friend Joe isn‘t dead. I sort of...lied.”  
“Joe’s alive?” Andy asked eagerly, hardly daring to hope.  
Brendon nodded and spat a gob of bloody snot on the floor, “Yeah. He escaped capture tonight, he’s not in the lair.”  
“Thank god,” Andy breathed, dropping his head into his hands. Relief flooded through him and for a moment he actually felt happy despite their current circumstances. Patrick however did not look happy at all and a storm of anger and hurt was brewing in his young face. Andy could tell he was about to lose it.

“You sick sonofabitch!” Patrick yelled, fury bringing him to his feet, “You made us believe our best friend was dead? You twisted evil freak!” Throwing himself at the injured vampire, he punched him in his bruised face as hard as he could. “Why did you do that to us? Why?!”  
“Get off me!” Brendon growled, head-butting the short hunter in the face and knocking him backwards with blood running from his nose. Andy took this opportunity to step quickly between them. “Stop it, both of you! Calm down.”  
“I am calm!” Patrick snapped, wiping his bloody nose on his sleeve, but his pale face was shining with sweat and he was breathing in rapid gasps.  
“No you’re not and you’re gonna pass out again if you don’t relax and rest so cool it, please. Whatever Brendon’s in here for, hitting him won’t help. Joe’s still alive, let’s just be grateful for that.”  
Trembling with anger and exhaustion, Patrick nodded reluctantly and shot a final glare at Brendon, “I wish Beckett had killed you tonight,” he grumbled.  
“Well you know what? So do I!” Brendon shot back.  
“That’s ENOUGH!” Andy bellowed, “Patrick, you need to sit down and Brendon, just shut up. I don’t know what’s going on with you but we can’t figure it out in here so do us a favor and be quiet.”

Patrick scowled and sat in a corner as far away from Brendon as he could possibly get while the vampire sulked miserably in his own corner of the cell and Andy looked helplessly between the two of them, hoping they wouldn’t kill each other before he thought of a way out of here.


	3. Before Dawn

In the deepest darkest corner of the dungeons, Pete was still tugging on his chains and trying to ignore the aching hunger in his stomach when the cuffs around his wrists and neck suddenly snapped open on their own and clattered to the floor. Stunned, he stared at his free hands in shock as the door to his cell unlocked itself and swung open as if by magic. Suspiciously, he took a hesitant step towards freedom, knowing that this must be some kind of trick. How was this even happening? 

The answer came a moment later when William Beckett’s disembodied voice slithered into Pete’s mind like a cold draught and enslaved his body, calling him and forcing him to move in a specific direction. His legs walked him out of the cell into the unknown black and he fought with everything he had to ignore the call but his body was numb to his mind’s wishes and his feet kept moving him closer to Beckett. Helpless and enraged, Pete was trapped inside his own skull as Beckett’s soulless summons echoed all around him like a winter gale.

***  
Just a few hours after he’d made the phone call, Joe heard the whisper of tyres pulling up outside the factory and a minute later somebody was knocking on the back door. Clutching a loaded crossbow, he cautiously unlocked it and aimed the weapon out at the shadows. 

Gerard was standing outside in the pre-dawn night dressed in black street clothes and a leather jacket that probably concealed several weapons. He was wearing Raybans despite the darkness and his scruffy hair shone black in the moonlight. Standing guard behind him were two more hunters Joe recognised as Gerard’s brother Mikey and their friend Frank. They too were dressed in black and in the pale moonlight only their faces and the handguns they were pointing directly at Joe were properly visible. Behind them, parked in the warehouse drive, was a large van. Also black. Joe was starting to see a theme here.

“Joe, right?,” Gerard said quietly, “We came as soon as we could.”  
“Glad you could make it,” Joe said gratefully, lowering his weapon and moving aside so that his guests could enter. Frank and Mikey glanced warily around the drive before putting their guns away and silently following their leader into the building. Joe bolted the door shut behind them. 

Leading the New Jersey guys into the factory den, which was currently a heap of old furniture lit by flickering hurricane lanterns, Joe motioned for them to sit down. Gerard took off his sunglasses, revealing a half-healed black eye and threw him an apologetic look. “Sorry it’s just the three of us. I had to leave Ray behind to keep an eye on things. We’ve seen a lot of action this week and it‘s kinda crazy at home. So tell us what happened.”

Joe sighed and scratched his head through his curls, not sure where to start. He was sick and tired of fighting vampires and it all seemed so futile in the end because as soon as one fanger was killed another was made to take its place but nobody could replace a human hunter killed in battle. The future looked bleak and it made Joe a little sad. 

Mikey took a seat in a nearby armchair and Frank slumped down beside Gerard on a pile of old couch cushions, pulling a bottle of coke from his coat and drinking it down in one go. Pushing gloomy thoughts aside, Joe made some coffee in the dusty but still functioning factory kitchen and together they planned a rescue. 

***  
Andy wanted more than anything to be far, far away from this place and living another life, maybe in a warm bed somewhere drinking tea and eating good food in front of the TV. He was tired and hungry and his whole body ached from sitting on cold hard stone and all he wanted to do was curl up and go to sleep but he didn’t dare let his guard down around Brendon. So far the teenage vampire hadn’t moved from his corner of the cell but Andy didn’t want to take any chances even if he still had a conscience like he claimed. Against the opposite wall, Patrick was sitting half-awake chewing sleepily on some gum he’d found in his jacket and Andy kept glancing at him to make sure he hadn’t passed out again. Unable to ignore the rumbling ache in his stomach Andy thought wistfully about his favourite foods and wondered why their vampire captors hadn’t given them anything to eat or drink yet and if they ever would. He thought about Pete and Joe too and hoped that wherever his friends were, they were doing okay. 

***  
After a humiliating forced-march through Beckett's lair Pete found himself outside the grandly-carved door to the Master vampire’s private chamber and it swung open with a low creak to admit him. With no other choice he stepped inside and saw Beckett sprawled proudly in a luxuriously-cushioned lounge chair on the far side of the room. The Master vampire smiled slyly and snapped his fingers and the chamber door slammed closed and locked itself behind Pete, trapping them inside together.

Unable to move unless Beckett wished him to, Pete stood stiffly by the door and looked at the part of the room within his line of sight. It was a wide, deep draughty chamber with a high ceiling and no natural light, illuminated by the flicker of dozens of melting candles. Against one wall stood an enormous four-poster bed bordered with black curtains and several chairs and closets were scattered about, many of them draped in chains, all of them stained with blood. Pete could smell Brendon’s blood in particular, filling the air as thick as rain but Brendon wasn’t here now. Another kid he had never seen before was kneeling by Beckett’s chair staring blankly at the floor with a chain around his neck. He looked a little older than Brendon, maybe in his early twenties, and was painfully thin with brown wavy hair and large downcast eyes ringed with shadows. He was naked from the waist up, wearing only black jeans and boots, and Pete could see the outline of nearly every bone in his scrawny torso. He could also smell his scent and knew that he wasn’t a vampire but a human.

“Beckett, you sick freak,” he muttered, surprised that he could speak, “That’s someone’s kid you’ve got there.”  
“He‘s older than he looks,” Beckett smirked, “I found him last night outside the k-mart and I couldn’t resist. His name is Ryan.” The Master vampire tugged sharply on Ryan’s collar and the boy looked up with eyes that were glazed and empty. He had probably been fed drugs to keep him mellow. Pete remembered all too clearly how Beckett treated his 'pets'. “Where’s Brendon?” he asked carefully, “I thought he was your favorite toy.”  
“Brendon won’t be bothering us today,” Beckett said dismissively.  
“You killed him, “ Pete guessed hollowly.  
“Not quite. But I didn’t bring you here to talk about other men, Peter.”  
“How do you keep getting inside my head?” Pete asked, changing the subject as his skin crawled, “I thought vampires could only enthral humans, not other vampires.”  
“I can do both,” Beckett crowed smugly, “But only with vampires I have made myself like you and Brendon. It works best on you.”  
“But then why in the past did you always sit back and watch me kill dozens of your crew when you could have stopped me at any time?”  
“I can always find new followers, Peter, that’s not the point. I love to see you in action. I love to watch you fight the inevitable.” 

Rising from his chair, Beckett dropped Ryan’s chain and stalked towards Pete with hunger in his yellow eyes. “I love it when you’re angry,” he added, licking his long white fangs, “And I love it when you hurt.”  
Pete shuddered as cold sweat trickled down his back. If his heart could beat it would be breaking his chest right now. “If you force me to stay with you it won‘t be real obedience,” he croaked, “It won’t be what you really want.”  
Stopping barely an inch away, Beckett stroked Pete’s hair with ice-cold fingers and grinned. “You are mine,” he hissed, “And I don’t care how I have you, only that I do.”

***  
“The sun will be up soon,” Joe noted, checking his watch as he drained the last dregs of coffee from his mug, “We’ll attack at dawn and use the daylight as a weapon.”  
Gerard nodded, “Busting into Beckett’s lair by knocking out the sun-facing wall will ghost a few vampires before the fight even starts.”  
“Fine, good. The sooner we go, the better.” 

As the leader of his own group of hunters, Gerard had done a lot of the battle planning, filling the role that Pete and Patrick would normally play if they were here, and Joe didn’t mind one bit. All he wanted was to see his friends safe again and it didn’t matter how that happened. Getting up to make more coffee he walked past Frank fast asleep on the couch and Mikey who was sitting at the kitchen table sharpening a row of wooden stakes. The clock on the wall said 6:45am. Sun-up was just around the corner and it couldn’t come soon enough.

***  
Shame, rage and injuries racked Pete’s body with hot spears of pain and it hurt so bad just to take a breath that he forced himself to stop breathing altogether. Vampires didn’t need to breathe to survive but often did it anyway if they were stuck in old human habits or if they were upset.

His shirt was in shreds and he gingerly pulled his torn hoodie back on over his beaten bleeding skin, too weak to get up from the floor where Beckett had left him to suffer. Cradling his aching head in shaking hands, he felt dirty and humiliated, poisoned with hate. Groaning as a fresh wave of pain danced mercilessly through his skull, he lurched forwards onto his hands and knees and vomited a mouthful of watery scarlet. He was so drained from punishment and hunger that he could barely support his own weight and sank down onto his side on the floor, shivering and dizzy as the room spun and grew darker with each passing second. He was spiralling in and out of unconsciousness and all he could see was blackened flesh and trickling blood and his friends lying dead and rotting somewhere in a hell he had forced them to enter. Why had he dragged them back to this cursed town? How could he have been so stupid!

While Beckett was beating him he hadn’t made a sound but now the Master vampire had left the room, locking the door behind him, Pete started to cry. Cold red tears rolled down his cheeks and neck and every raw choked sob made his wounds hurt even worse but he didn‘t care. All of this had happened because of his own obsession with revenge. He'd wanted Beckett dead more than anything in this world but he had messed up so big this time and everything was ten times worse. His friends were god knows where and he was trapped, helpless and pathetic, under Beckett's control like a muzzled dog on a leash. He couldn’t stand feeling this vulnerable. Beckett should have just killed him and put him out of his misery.

“Hey, vampire. What's your deal?”  
Pete flinched at the sound of the small voice from the shadows and looked up, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. He'd forgotten that the human Ryan was still here. Forcing himself to sit up slowly against the wall beside him, he blinked the room back into focus and saw Ryan standing less than six feet away, tugging on the metal collar around his neck . Whatever drugs Beckett had fed him to keep him calm were obviously wearing off and his brown eyes were wide with confusion and panic. Pete could smell his fear. “Who are you?” Ryan asked, gazing around in terror at the dying candles and blood-stained furniture,. “Do you know how to get out of here?”

Wiping his eyes again, Pete used the wall to support himself as he got slowly to his feet, wincing as fresh pain spiked through his bruised legs. Ryan’s eyes narrowed suspiciously and he backed away a few steps. Smart guy, Pete thought to himself. Taking a hoarse, calming breath, he held out his open hands in a gesture of peace, “It‘s okay,” he said quietly, pain pounding like hammers behind his eyes, “I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m a prisoner here too.”  
“Yeah but you’re a vampire,” Ryan said, looking stonily at Pete’s fanged mouth, “Why should I trust you?”  
“How much do you know about vampires?” Pete sighed.  
“I know they’re all over this town like a plague,” Ryan snapped, “And I know they kill a dozen people a week but the cops don’t do anything to stop it because half of them are fangers too now. They killed my cousin last year and took my best friend right off the street when we were kids. Now they’ve got me too I guess.” Trailing off, he swallowed and looked down at his half-naked body. “I hate them!” he growled, folding his arms over his skinny chest, “I fucking hate you all!”

Pete took another deep breath and regretted it instantly as pain flashed in his ribs. “Listen…Ryan, is it? I hate vampires too dude, but I’m not like the rest of them, I swear to God. The things they do to people are wrong and fucking evil! I’m not like that, in fact I spend my life trying to stop them and I don’t hurt humans ever. Something is…wrong with me I guess, or maybe right. I am a vampire but I’m still human on the inside. I don’t know why. The other vamps tried to make me feed off a young woman when they turned me, she couldn’t have been more than seventeen. I didn’t want to hurt her so I ran away. The other vampires hate me and want me to suffer. They hunt me and I hunt them and you saw what Beckett did to me tonight, right? If you don’t trust what I’m saying then trust what you saw. I’m on your side, Ryan.”  
“Maybe you are,” Ryan sighed miserably, “But you still ended up here didn't you. They still got you in the end.” Shivering, he trudged over to the bed and sat down on the plush sheets. “There’s just too fucking many of them,” he muttered, blinking tears out of his brown eyes, “And it doesn’t matter how far you run or how long you fight because no one can stand up to them and win. I can‘t even-”

Ryan’s next words were cut off by a blinding flash and crack of lightning as Beckett appeared out of thin air in the middle of the room in a whirlwind of sulphur and smoke. The Master’s fancy suit was streaked and dripping with blood and gore and his eyeballs had turned as black as ink. Red crackling trails of demonic energy snaked and sparked over his white skin and the room filled with the stench of death. 

Open-mouthed, Pete felt his battered body falling back under Beckett’s psychic control as Ryan jumped up in terror and ran for the door. Baring blood-soaked fangs, Beckett glared at his pet and thrust out a glowing hand, shooting a blast of red lightning at the boy. Somehow Ryan managed to dodge most of the crimson fire but a few crackling coils struck his back and shoulders and he dropped to the floor howling with pain.  
Laughing manically, Beckett turned back to Pete and with a gesture of his hand forced him to kneel on the stone floor. “It’s time to go now, Peter. My own Master, the Master of all vampires, is waiting for us.”


	4. Battle

“Well are you ready guys?” Gerard smiled, stamping on the van’s accelerator as they sped towards the old unconsecrated church that served as Beckett’s base of operations.  
“You know it,” Frank answered from the back seat, pulling on leather fingerless gloves with armoured knuckles.  
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Joe added with a little less confidence.  
“Don’t worry, we can do this,” Mikey said calmly, slipping a sharpened stake into his jacket. “Of course we can,” Gerard agreed, although his eyes were deadly serious as he stared through the windshield, “Piece of cake.”

Early morning light flashed and they drove faster and faster, tearing up the lonely hill of dying grass and crumbling tombs that made up the church cemetery. The town was behind them now, spread out below the treeline, and ahead of them the unholy church stood grey and derelict. The windows had been boarded up long ago and the bell tower was a threatening spectre in the pale dawn sky. For a quarter of a mile in every direction, rows of broken headstones and decrepit mausoleums covered the landscape and underground dozens of tunnels and dusty burial vaults formed a labyrinth of cold passages and watery dungeons. 

The van roared over the graveyard with the engine revved as high as it would go and the hunters careened recklessly through the tangled undergrowth towards the rusty church gates. “Hold on to something,” Gerard muttered and the black van smashed through the gates, busting them apart at the hinges, and hurtled straight through the church’s front doors in an explosion of brick and splintered timber. Bursting through the debris into the main church hall, Gerard swerved the battered vehicle 180 degrees and hit the brakes, slamming the van to a halt against a row of broken pews.  
“Is everyone okay?” he asked, reaching under the dash for a long silver sword. “I’m good,” Joe answered, unbuckling his seatbelt as outside a dozen vampires dressed in gray suits surged out of side-rooms and basement levels into the church hall. The monsters had their fangs bared and weapons ready but a wide pool of sunlight streamed in through the destroyed doorway and surrounded the van in golden light so the outraged vampires were trapped in the shadows at the edges of the room. For now. 

“Let’s kill ‘em all!” Frank cried, bouncing in his seat with nervous energy.  
“Alright then, listen,” Gerard ordered, “Frank, go check out the lower levels with Joe and find his friends. Mikey, you’re with me: we’ll take out as many fangers as we can. Let's move.”

The four hunters jumped out into the sunlight, weapons drawn and the vampires hissed like a circle of hungry cobras. Joe looked anxiously at the ring of snarling monsters, adrenaline pumping, and glimpsed a doorway half-hidden in the shadows with stairs beyond it. Hopefully that was the way down to the cells where Beckett’s prisoners were kept. Grabbing Frank’s arm, he pointed at the door and they both charged out of the sun into the lethal shade.

Saving the electric net-gun strapped to his back for later, Joe used a wooden sword to stab the nearest vampire in the chest, pushing the blade through the creature’s heart and out its back. With a cry of rage the vampire died, its demonic life-force spilling out in a sickly-green light before it exploded into ashes. Whirling around, Joe used the sword to bludgeon another vampire over the head and punched it to the ground as it doubled over in pain, staking it before it had time to counter-attack. 

Now where was that dungeon door again? Before he could get his bearings, Joe was blind-sided by two more vamps who shoved him to the ground and tore the sword out of his hand. Cursing, he kicked one of his attackers in the face as hard as he could, smashing the vampire’s mouth into a mess of blood and splintered fangs and the creature staggered backwards, crashing into Gerard who severed its head in a spray of blood and mystical light, killing it instantly. This enraged Joe’s second attacker and it leapt on Gerard scratching and biting like a rabid dog and knocked him down. Freed for the moment, Joe jumped to his feet to help but before he could even take a breath he was kicked to the floor again by three more of Beckett's minions. 

Shielding his face as the vampires beat him, Joe tried to fight back but they had the advantage and attacked relentlessly, slashing his arms with daggers and kicking him savagely in the back and chest. Gasping for breath as blood oozed hot and wet through his sleeves, Joe thought he was about to die with a dagger in his chest until one of his attackers suddenly screamed and arched backwards before exploding into dust. The other two looked up from their prey in surprise just in time to meet the business end of Frank’s sword as the short New Jersey hunter stabbed the blade straight through them, skewering their stomachs like peppers on a barbeque spit. The impaled vamps stood there stunned until Frank tackled them as hard as he could, sending himself and them skidding over the church floor into the pool of sunlight. The sun’s rays incinerated the monsters in seconds and Frank pulled his sword free of their ashes and rolled away snickering gleefully. 

Panting for breath, Joe got to his feet and stumbled into the sunlight for safety to check his wounds. Blood was dripping from his fingertips and soaking through his sleeves but it didn’t look too bad so he plunged back into the battle, relieved to see that the crowd of vampires was thinning out. Gerard and Mikey were still battling the last rabid few but the door to the dungeons was now clear and Frank was already there waving him over. Nodding grimly, Joe headed for the door, scooping up his fallen sword before following Frank into the gloomy depths. 

***  
Running down a winding staircase, Joe and Frank descended into a darkness so deep they were as good as blind. Still buzzing from the fight, Joe strapped a flashlight to his left arm and turned it on to illuminate their steps. It was bitterly cold down here and the air reeked of blood. Water dripped steadily somewhere nearby and ominous bangs and crashes still sounded over their heads from the battle above. 

At the foot of the stairs the hunters found themselves in a long stone corridor stretching away to the left and the right and branching off into four smaller passages, all of them dark. “Huh,” Frank whispered, his green eyes wide in his boyish face as he looked at their options, “So which way?”  
“I have no idea,” Joe said, glancing around in annoyance and toying with the idea of just calling out his friends names to see if they answered. Well, it wasn’t like he had much of a choice was it. “ANDY!” he shouted, “PETE!”  
“Are you nuts?” Frank gasped, punching him in the shoulder, “Way to attract more blood-suckers, man.”  
“It doesn’t matter now, they already know we’re here.” Joe argued, shining his light at the slimy passage walls. “Okay, this way,” he decided, running off to the left with Frank close behind. It may not have been the best direction to pick as after less than a minute a huge vampire came charging down the passage towards them swinging a metal cane and Joe spun out of the way, throwing himself against the wall but Frank wasn’t as quick and the vampire slammed into him like a freight train, knocking him down and smacking him over the head with the cane. With a yelp of pain, Frank collapsed on his back and the vampire turned on Joe. “You shouldn’t have come here, human!” he snarled, “You‘ll never get out alive!”  
“I disagree,” Joe snorted, lifting his arm to shine the flashlight into the vampire’s eyes. Blinded by the sudden glare, the monster couldn’t see Joe’s sword until it was too late. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. 

“Are you okay?” Joe asked Frank, stepping over the dead vampire’s remains. “Yeah?” Frank answered uncertainly, gingerly rubbing his head. Blood was running down his face from under his dark hair and he looked a little dazed. “Come on,” Joe said, pulling him to his feet, “Let’s go.”

***  
“Pete!… Andy!…Patrick!”

“That’s Joe’s voice!” Andy cried, running to the cell bars. “Hey Joe, we’re here!”  
“Your friend is wasting his time,” Brendon muttered moodily, picking at the dried blood on his arms, “You can’t escape the lair. Beckett will kill you first.”  
“Shut up,” Patrick snapped through gritted teeth.  
Running footsteps echoed out of the darkness and the bright beam of a flashlight appeared moments before Joe himself.  
“Joe!” Andy exclaimed happily, “You don't know how good it is to see you, man!”  
“Sorry for the wait,” Joe grinned, “Hey Patrick, you okay? Where’s Pete?”  
“We don’t know,” Andy sighed, his smile vanishing, “Brendon said Beckett might have him.”  
“Brendon what the hell are you doing down here?” Joe frowned, pulling some lock-picking tools from his pocket and kneeling down by the cell door, “You’re looking a little beat up, kid. Are you done being Beckett’s fuck puppet?”  
Brendon scowled darkly, “Fuck. Off.”

Andy chuckled and leaned against the bars watching Joe work as another hunter he recognised appeared out of the darkness, distractedly wiping blood from his face.  
“Hey guys,” Frank smiled, “Glad to see you’re not dead.”  
“This is so touching,” Brendon mumbled, “I’m sure to barf any minute now.”  
“I said shut up!” Patrick snapped angrily, clenching his fists. 

“How’s that lock looking?” Andy asked worriedly. Joe shrugged and slipped the edge of a tiny screwdriver into the mechanism. “It’s pretty old,” he muttered, “Won't take more than a minute.”  
“We might not have a minute,” Frank warned, eyeing the shadows around them, “If Mikey and Gee can’t keep the vamps above ground they’ll come down here and we‘ll be trapped.”  
“Gerard and Mikey are here too?” Patrick asked, his face brightening.  
Andy strode over to Brendon and stood over the shackled vampire with his arms folded, “If Beckett has Pete, where would he take him?”  
Brendon sniffed and glared at Patrick through bruised eyes, “I thought I wasn’t allowed to talk.”  
Frank frowned and pulled a small crossbow from a holster on his back, aiming it through the bars at Brendon’s chest. “If you don’t answer the question I’ll kill you.”  
“Okay okay,” Brendon muttered, “Pete's cell is down the passage you came from but take a left and then a right and keep walking. If he's not there then he’s probably in my Master’s…I mean in Beckett’s private room above the main lair in the belltower.”  
“That wasn’t so hard now was it?” Frank said, sliding his crossbow sideways through the bars and passing it to Andy, “I’ll go check that cell.” 

By the time Frank jogged back into sight two minutes later Joe had unlocked the rusty door and swung it open. “Pete’s cell is empty but I ran into another fanger on the way and before I dusted him he said something like ‘that Ryan boy belongs to the Master now’ so I guess he thought I was there to rescue someone called Ryan. I dunno, you think he might be another human prisoner?”  
“Maybe,” Joe shrugged, holding the door open as Andy backed slowly out of the cell with the crossbow aimed at Brendon, “Let’s go guys.”

“Wait, did you say Ryan Ross?” Brendon asked, his eyes wide.  
“I just said Ryan,” Frank replied, wiping at the blood still trickling down his forehead, “How would I know his full name, asshole?”  
Brendon sighed and hugged his knees to his chest, “Before I got sired, I had a best friend called Ryan. He was about my age…and the same type of boy Beckett likes. I thought he was still out there safe from all this shit but I heard a rumor yesterday that Beckett had a new pet and -”  
“Uh huh, sure,” Frank said impatiently, passing a spare stake to Patrick.  
“If we find this Ryan and he’s still human we'll help him, you have my word,” Andy said as Joe swung the cell door closed.  
“Wait! Can’t I come with you?” Brendon asked desperately, getting up and then slipping in his own blood, almost falling down again.  
“Are you nuts?” Joe scoffed.  
“I’ll die if you leave me down here,” Brendon cried, his eyes flooding with fear, “And I’m not a bad vampire, remember Andy? You heard what I said before. I was telling the truth, you have to believe me!”  
Andy sighed, looking doubtful.  
“I swear I’ll be good. You can do what you like with me later, just please don’t leave me here!” Brendon begged.  
“No way,” Patrick frowned.  
“Yeah,” Joe agreed, shaking his head, “The only vampire I’d ever trust is Pete.”  
“Sorry Brendon,” Andy shrugged as Joe locked the door again, imprisoning the young vampire inside, “You’re staying put.”

***  
So far this had been one of the worst days of Patrick’s life and strangely enough being rescued hadn’t made it much better. True, while he was locked up he’d been dreading torture and a painful death but now that he was free and on his way upstairs he was shamefully shit-scared of the bone-crunching thuds, breaking glass, screaming vampires and roaring flamethrowers he could hear up above. In a few moments he might be fighting for his life and this scared him more than anything else ever had because he knew that if he had to fight he would die. 

Even on his best days he was hopeless at hand-to-hand combat - that was Pete, Joe and Andy’s thing - and on this particular day he was injured and so tired he could barely climb these stairs.  
“You don’t have to fight, Trick,” Joe whispered reassuringly, reading his mind, “Just go outside and stay in the sunshine. You’ll be safe.”  
“Kay,” Patrick nodded, biting his lip, but he wasn't very comforted because whether he was in the sunshine or not, some of the vampires could still shoot at him with crossbows from the shade. Or guns. What if they had guns?! He hated himself for being so frightened but wishing he was braver or a better fighter wouldn’t change anything.

Moments later the four hunters reached the main lair at the top of the stairs and were confronted by chaos. Andy, Frank and Joe ran straight into the fray, weapons raised, but Patrick hesitated in the doorway gazing in horror at the devastation: the church hall was a war-zone. The main doors and most of the wall around them had been blasted into rubble and the dirty tiled floor was actually on fire in several places and carpeted with ash and bones. The air was thick with heat and dust and foul smoke from the fires which stung Patrick’s eyes and made him cough. Gingerly stepping into the room he ducked as a demonic body flew through the air and smashed into a nearby pillar, sending chunks of broken plaster shooting past his head as he stumbled and dropped to his hands and knees in a mess of broken glass. The fallen vampire staggered to its feet and spotted him, laughing giddily and snapping its fangs, but before it could touch him a well-aimed wooden arrow shot through the air and killed it and Patrick realised he had been holding his breath in terror. He had to get out of here! 

Scrambling towards the gaping hole in the church wall, Patrick looked for any sign of safe, bright sunlight but there wasn't much to be seen. Outside the sky was darkening with swollen purple rain clouds and in the middle of the hall a battered black van was parked in a ragged circle of dull gray daylight but the light was faint and smothered in smoke. If it had been sunny enough to toast vampires before it certainly wasn't now. They were so screwed!

Wiping dirt and broken glass from his palms, Patrick peered cautiously through the smoke and caught sight of Gerard’s little brother Mikey standing on the black van’s roof with a flame-thrower strapped to his back trying to incinerate a mob of snarling, howling vampires who had encircled the vehicle and were rocking it back and forth, trying to make him lose his balance. He was hopelessly outnumbered and every few seconds one of the vampires would jump up to a super-human height and land on the van’s roof, forcing Mikey to blast it away at close range and risk setting himself on fire as well. The vamps shrieked and giggled crazily as they rocked the van back and forth and pounded it with crowbars, smashing the headlights and windows to smithereens. The dented vehicle shuddered and swayed under their assault and Mikey was struggling to stay on his feet, covered in soot and sweat. He needed help but everyone else was busy: at the far end of the church Andy, Joe and Gerard were combating a growing herd of vampires pouring steadily out of a hidden entrance behind the altar and blood, ash and smoke sprayed into the air as they fought. Patrick was amazed Gerard and Mikey had managed to survive up here so long by themselves because it seemed almost impossible, but he knew that the brothers had been trained in weapons and swordplay since they were children and were incredible fighters. Much better than he would ever be.

Battling to overcome his own fear, he forced himself to step out of the shadows, coughing on the vile smoke billowing up from the burning vampire corpses on the floor. None of the vamps around the van had noticed him yet but it was only a matter of time. Mikey was losing ground as more vampires leapt onto the vehicle's roof to attack him, and when Frank suddenly appeared out of the haze brandishing a sword and what looked like a fire-axe and started hacking away at the monsters still on the ground, Patrick was relieved. Unfortunately, the vampires had the advantage in numbers and Frank was soon seized by the arms and slammed against the van’s hood by a pack of four who were trying their very best to tear him apart. 

Fighting for his life, Frank head-butted one of his attackers in the face and viciously stabbed another, pissing off its friends who quickly grabbed his wrists and smashed his hands against the van until he dropped his weapons. Cackling with glee, the creatures dragged him kicking and screaming to the floor and pinned him down while they beat him with fists and clubs and the vampire who’d been stabbed picked up a red-hot iron candlestick from the burning floor and thrust it towards Frank’s face.

Forcing himself into action, Patrick picked up a spear of broken wood from the debris and ran over, staking the vampire with the candlestick in the back as hard as he could. A flash of green light briefly lit up the creature’s corpse before it collapsed into cinders and the candlestick clattered harmlessly to the floor, alerting the other vampires to Patrick's presence. Snarling like rabid dogs, two of them let go of Frank and immediately turned on him, raising their weapons in fury, while the third vampire sat on Frank’s chest and began to brutally strangle him, laughing as the hunter choked and struggled on the burnt floor.  
Swallowing hard, Patrick backed away around the shuddering van as the two creatures advanced on him with their fangs bared, dripping saliva, and he could barely feel the wooden stake in his sweaty hand. There was no way he could kill both of them before they tore him to shreds. “Ohgod!” he gasped tearfully as his pulse drummed in his shaking limbs and the vampires leapt at him. This was it: he was going to die... 

But a falling body tumbled out of the air and landed with a thud between him and the two vampires before they could touch him, exploding into ashes. Patrick looked up open-mouthed and saw Mikey standing on the van’s hood with his flame-thrower aimed. WHOOOSH!! A sizzling blast of yellow flame gushed from the weapon and burnt Patrick's attackers to a crisp, unleashing yet another cloud of oily black smoke into the air. Mikey nodded grimly at Patrick and jumped back onto the van’s roof where more fangers were waiting to pounce. “Go help Frank!” he ordered, boosting up the flame-thrower again. 

Weak with relief, Patrick dashed back to where he’d last seen Frank and saw that while most of the vampires here had been reduced to piles of smoking ash Mikey hadn't been able to toast the one attacking Frank without burning his friend as well. When Patrick reached them, Frank was lying unconscious on the floor while the vampire buried its jaws in his neck and gorged on his blood. The feasting monster didn’t even notice Patrick until his stake was in its back. It let out a howl of rage as it died but the noise was drowned out by the clashing of swords and the crackling fires. 

Without waiting around to be attacked again, Patrick checked Frank was still breathing and then grabbed him by the arms and dragged his body across the hall to the hole where the doors used to be. Frank was short and skinny like Patrick but unconscious he was just dead weight and Patrick struggled to get him outside into the crumbling cemetery and away from the church, stopping to catch his breath next to a mausoleum that hid them from the fight. 

Dropping his injured comrade in the cold brown grass, Patrick sank wearily to his knees, his head spinning as he coughed his guts out from smoke. Frank was still alive, barely, but his hair and face were bathed in blood and the bite-marks in his neck looked deep. “Shit shit shit,” Patrick groaned, “Frank, wake up! Can you hear me?”

Frank mumbled something in his sleep but didn‘t open his eyes. Thunder growled ominously in the dark sky and lightning flashed. Patrick groaned and shivered, close to tears, How was he meant to fix this? Shrugging off his jacket, he tore up one of the sleeves and used it to bandage Frank’s neck before rolling him onto his side and reluctantly abandoning him to return to the church for help. 

New vampires had stopped sneaking in through the altar door and Joe and Andy were helping Gerard finish off the last of the blood-suckers still running wild around the church. They looked to be doing okay but Patrick could see Mikey was in trouble as the last two vampires near the van jumped onto it together and body-slammed Mikey down on the metal roof, ripping the flamethrower from his back and turning it around to aim straight at his face. “Help!” Mikey cried as one of the vampires stood on his chest and the other one fired up the weapon, “HELP ME!”

Gerard heard his brother’s cries and abandoned his own fight, running for the van, but he only got a few paces before his opponent tackled him again. “Mikey!” he yelled, lifting his sword and hacking at the vampire pinning him down, “Someone help my brother!”

In another second Mikey would be on fire and Patrick was the only one near enough to help. Without thinking, he picked up a brick from the rubble at his feet and threw it as hard as he could at the vampire holding the flamethrower. The brick missed the vamp but slammed into the nozzle of the weapon just as the demon pulled the trigger and knocked it away from Mikey’s face towards the other vampire on the roof. The monster screamed and burst into flames and Mikey managed to scramble away and slide off the van, landing heavily on the smoking floor. Staggering away from its burning friend, the vampire with the flamethrower also fell and Patrick was already waiting for it with a piece of broken timber. It was dead the moment it hit the ground. 

Coughing and wheezing, Mikey sat up and wiped his eyes. “Thanks Patrick,” he gasped, “That was brutal.”  
A minute later, Gerard finally made it to the van and crashed to his knees next to his little brother. “Mikey, are you okay?” he cried, blood running from his nose as he grabbed Mikey’s shoulders, “Are you alright, tell me!”  
“I’m fine, Gee. Chill.”  
“Are you sure?”  
“Yes! Calm down, I‘m okay.”  
“Okay...Sorry,” Gerard gasped shakily, wiping his bloody nose on his sleeve, “I’m sorry I didn‘t get to you fast enough. I tried.”  
“It’s all good, Patrick was here,” Mikey smiled, squeezing his brother's shoulder.  
“Thank you so much Patrick,” Gerard said gratefully, wiping his nose again and then both his eyes, mixing blood and tears, “I don’t know what I’d do if Mikey was gone...”  
“You‘re welcome,” Patrick mumbled, hugging himself as a sudden wave of dizzy nausea shook his insides. The bites in his neck from last night were stinging with cold sweat and he felt faint.

“You okay Patrick?” Joe asked as he and Andy came over to the group, bloody but still standing. All the vampires were dead and the hunters were alone. “Where did you go?”  
“Nowhere, I‘m fine,” Patrick lied, “But Frank is hurt, come on!”

***  
Outside by the mausoleum, Gerard's face crumpled at the sight of his unconscious friend. “Oh fuck no,” he groaned as a cold wind rose through the graveyard, “What happened?”  
Mikey knelt down in the dirty grass by Frank’s body, staring at him with petrified eyes, “Frankie?”

Unsure what to do now, Patrick hung back slightly with Andy and Joe, blinking hard as his vision began to shake and blur. The sky over the cemetery was heavy with rain and thunder rumbled as a cold wind moaned over the hill. Shivering weakly, Patrick tried to remember what he’d done with his jacket.  
“What happened?” Gerard blurted while Mikey examined Frank‘s wounds, “Someone tell me!”  
“He...He was attacked by four vamps at once,” Patrick stammered as another bout of dizziness shook his aching head, “I-I couldn’t reach him in time, I'm sorry.”  
“He took a blow to the head in the dungeons too,” Joe added quietly, “I thought he was okay but I guess not…”  
“Frank, wake up!” Gerard begged, “Wake up, that's an order!”  
“I’ll call an ambulance,” Joe said, taking out his cell phone.  
“Wait, no! How would we explain all this?” Gerard asked, pointing at the shattered, smoking church, “We need to get him to hospital ourselves.”  
“The van’s a bit trashed,” Andy observed.  
“I can still drive it,” Mikey said confidently, “I can drive anything.”  
“Ok fine, but not all of us are leaving while Pete is still MIA,” Joe said firmly.  
“Right, Pete. Of course,” Gerard gulped, laying his hand on Frank‘s chest, “So quick, decide who’s staying and who's going. Mikey, get the van ready.”

Patrick bit his tongue, unable to follow the conversation anymore as his vision faded in and out like a dimmer switch. The adrenaline rush brought on by fear and the fight had drained out of his veins now, leaving him dizzy and weak and still lacking in blood. All he wanted to do was sleep but when he closed his eyes his head spun even faster and he almost puked so he forced them open again. Thunder boomed loudly overhead. Everyone was bruised or bleeding, standing there among the gravestones. 

Shivering badly, Patrick felt his ribcage jerking with short, unsteady breaths as his heart raced and his vision suddenly flooded with red and black spots. Stumbling against the mausoleum wall, he rubbed his eyes with a clammy, trembling hand as his limbs turned to water. He couldn’t feel the ground under his boots. The howling wind and the voices of his friends faded to a distant buzz and then black shadows poured into his eyes and everything plummeted away.

“Woah, hey!” Andy exclaimed as Patrick suddenly staggered sideways and collapsed in the dirt beside him passed out,“Patrick, buddy!”  
“What’s wrong with him?” Joe asked worriedly, “Is he hurt?”  
“Well yeah, some fucking fangers drank his blood last night,” Andy snapped, brushing Patrick’s sooty hair back to feel his forehead, “And I doubt the fire did his asthma any good either. He was in no shape to be fighting today. Shit...Joe, he feels cold.”

“Alright, that’s it,” Gerard cried, “Mikey, take Frank and Patrick to the hospital right now and get yourself checked out too while you’re there.”  
Mikey nodded, looking sideways at his brother, “And what about you?”  
“I’ll stay here and help Andy and Joe look for Pete.”  
“Gerard, you don’t have to stay,” Andy said softly, “We can look for Pete on our own.”  
Gerard shook his head, “No, I’ll stick with you. What use would I be at the hospital? Besides, you might need all the back-up you can get.”


	5. Enemies

The thunderous clouds finally burst and unleashed an almighty deluge of rain over the town, quickly clogging the gutters with flood debris and turning the streets into rivers. Mikey drove the battered, sluggish van as fast as he could while rainwater trickled in through cracks in the windshield and blew through the broken side windows soaking him to the skin. He could barely see the road through the downpour and expected to be pulled over by cops at any second for daring to drive this death-trap in such bad weather. Then again, he'd heard all the cops in this town were undead.

Despite the dark sky and sinister mist that had swept into town along with the storm, it was only a little after 8am, and also a Sunday, so the streets were nearly deserted. Mikey ploughed on through the gushing roads, coaxing the dying van along and desperately hoping he was heading towards the hospital and not away from it. Sighing wearily, he wiped rain from the slippery steering wheel and rubbed a wet sleeve over his eyes to clear them of wind-blown grit and water. Beside him in the passenger seat Patrick was drifting in and out of consciousness and Frank was lying on the back seat completely out of it, his body sliding back and forth over the wet leather whenever the van turned a corner. Gritting his teeth against the rising panic in his gut, Mikey forced himself to imagine that everyone he cared about would survive this day in one piece, but it was hard to be optimistic when the van floor was soaked in bloody water. He was tired and aching from the fight and his arms and knuckles were bruised and scorched. What if Frank never woke up? What if this evil town was the final nail in the coffin for them all?

At last the white towers of the county hospital rose out of the fog and the rain-swept ambulance bay became the last resting place of the van. Mikey let the engine die and jumped out into the downpour, running straight for the Emergency Room doors. The waiting room was nearly empty and the few members of staff wandering around looked up in surprise as Mikey dashed in soaking wet and skidded to a halt on the slippery floor. “Somebody help, please, my friends need help!” 

***  
“Something’s bugging me about all this,” Joe murmured in a hushed voice as they wandered around the echoing rooms of the smashed and broken church. “Yeah,” Andy agreed, “Where the hell is Beckett?”  
“Exactly. We broke into his lair, killed his goons and snatched his prisoners and he didn’t do shit to us. He didn’t even show his face. What gives?”  
“Maybe he’s gone out of town?” Gerard guessed, pausing to light a cigarette in the dimness. Joe snorted in disbelief and looked around suspiciously at the damp, smoking rubble, “Nah, we're not that lucky.”

Thanks to the storm now raging outside it was almost too dark to see and by the spooky glow of Joe's flashlight the hunters picked their way carefully around the building, weapons still drawn. The fires had burned out and the sky was a black and angry ocean. Rain poured angrily down on the cemetery and washed into the church through the broken wall, mixing with dirt and vampire ashes and covering the floor in sludge.  
“We should have found Beckett's private room by now,” Andy sighed, peering into the shadows with squinted eyes, “It's like the entrance to the bell tower just disappeared. Could it be hidden?”  
“I think this is a trap,” Joe whispered, getting jittery with tension.  
“Porbably,” Gerard muttered, exhaling tobacco smoke into the damp air, his sword tucked under his arm.  
“We could go and ask Brendon for more info,” Andy suggested.  
“We could,” Gerard agreed reluctantly.  
“You're kidding right?” Joe groaned.  
“Got any better ideas?” Andy asked, his soft voice swallowed by a boom of thunder. Joe pulled a face. 

***  
It didn't take long to find their way back to the correct cell and Brendon was still sitting in the corner where they’d left him, hugging his knees to his battered chest with his face buried in them. Andy loudly cleared his throat, “Brendon, wakey wakey. We need to talk to you.”  
Looking up at the sound of his name, Brendon flinched in the flashlight’s glare. “What are you still doing here?” he croaked, wiping a red crust of dried tears from his eyes, “If you survived the fight you should leave.”  
“Trust me, we can’t wait to get out of this hellhole,” Joe said, aiming his crossbow through the bars, “But first we need to know exactly where Beckett is and you‘re going to tell us.”  
Brendon stared hollow-eyed at the crossbow and didn‘t move. “How should I know where he is? You were the ones fighting him.”  
“Actually he never showed up to our little party,” Joe confessed, “But he’s still holding our friend captive somewhere so tell us where that somewhere might be and maybe I won’t shoot you.”  
“He didn‘t fight you?” Brendon repeated nervously, “Oh, that’s not right. Beckett should have confronted you as soon as you attacked the lair. He hates you guys and I mean he can enthral humans at will. He could’ve killed you all!”  
“That’s fascinating,” Joe said impatiently, “Come on Brendon, just tell us where to find Beckett's hidey-holes.”  
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Brendon shrugged, slowly getting to his feet, his bruised and beaten body trembling, “He should be here. There’s no reason he would leave. Seriously, this doesn’t make sense to me. I-”

Joe fired the crossbow and a wooden bolt shot through the air like a bullet and pierced Brendon’s shoulder. Shouting with pain, the vampire gaped in horror at the hunters, his black eyes wide and scared. “Ooops,” Joe muttered sarcastically, reloading the weapon, “I missed his heart.”  
“Wait, stop!” Brendon begged, “Don’t kill me, please, I don‘t wanna die here!”  
“Then tell us what we need to know,” Andy ordered.  
“I can‘t!” the vampire insisted, “I don’t know where Beckett is!” Pinching the end of the arrow lodged in his shoulder with a shaking hand, he closed his eyes and yanked it out of his flesh, gasping in pain as blood trickled down his chest. “If h-he didn’t confront you in battle then he’s not here. He’s gone somewhere else and must’ve taken Pete with him, okay?”  
“Beckett left the lair during the daytime?” Joe asked sceptically.  
Brendon nodded and glanced up at the damp ceiling. “I can hear the storm you know. Storms this big shield us from sunlight and make it safe to move around. Besides, Beckett doesn’t travel like the rest of us. He can do mystical stuff, transportation spells. I don’t understand how it works but he can just disappear…and reappear somewhere else.”

Blinking back fresh tears, the vampire bit his lip and clenched his cuffed hands together. “Listen, I'm co-operating with you I promise,” he sobbed desperately, “And I can’t stay here. When Beckett finds out you’ve all escaped he’ll kill me!”  
“That’s not really our problem,” Gerard said.  
“Please take me with you,” the vampire begged, “You can do whatever you want to me, just don’t leave me here! I’ll help you, I swear. I can show you where else in town Beckett might go. I-I want to help you find Pete!”  
“No, you just want to save yourself,” Joe snapped, “You’re a blood-sucker Brendon. You’re lucky we haven’t killed you already.”  
“You think I asked to be a vampire?” Brendon cried, “Beckett took my whole life away when I was just a fucking kid, can you even understand that? He killed my family for fuck's sake! And he made me serve him because if I didn't he would kill me. You think I wanted that? Well fuck you! I’m not even like the other vampires! They think being turned is like being reborn but for me it was like dying…” Wiping his eyes and smearing his bruised cheeks with crimson, Brendon sank wearily against the stone cell wall, hiding his face “I don’t want to kill anyone,” he wept, “And I h-haven’t, never. I drank, sure, and you can punish me for that but I didn't kill! I’m not like them! I pretended...I pretend and that’s why Beckett beat me so bad last night: he found out.” 

Joe frowned, his grip on the crossbow weakening. He wasn’t used to seeing vampires cry. 

“I’m sorry I lied,” Brendon sobbed, looking at Andy now for mercy, “I’m s-sorry I said Joe was dead. I only did it because I was scared. Please, can you just for one second imagine that I’m telling you the truth? That I might be good inside like Pete?”  
“I don't know, this smells like bullshit,” Joe said, re-aiming the crossbow.  
“Wait,” Andy interrupted, putting a hand on Joe’s arm, “Don’t kill him, Joe, not yet. Something’s not right.”  
“Meaning?” Gerard asked.  
“I mean… Well for example, have you ever met another vampire besides Pete who says he hates what he is? Or says he’s sorry, like, for ANYTHING? Have you ever seen a vampire cry before? We all know that a typical fanger is a cold-blooded psychopath who loves murder and celebrates death. They are proud of what they are, boastful even, and they will fight tooth and nail for more power and more blood and more control, right? All of last night in this cell though, Brendon didn’t act like that at all. In fact, tell me if I’m wrong but I can’t remember ever actually seeing him kill, even back in the old days when he was just a baby fanger. Once a vampire makes its first kill it become soulless, incapable of love or empathy or guilt.”  
“What‘s your point, man?” Joe said impatiently.  
“My point is that if Brendon was a typical vampire he wouldn’t be capable of crying like he is now. Without a soul or conscience of whatever you want to call it, he shouldn’t be able to cry genuine tears but I think he is and not just for himself. I think he‘s different, Joe. He’s not crazy like the others. He’s just sad.”  
“Oh come on, Andy, open your eyes,” Joe argued, irritated, “He’s probably faking it. He’s seen what Pete is like and he’s copying him.”  
Andy shrugged, “Maybe, but I spent hours locked up in this cage with him and he never once tried to bite me or Patrick even though he clearly needs to drink fresh blood to heal himself. He and Pete were both turned by the same Master so there is a possibility they could be the same. Could you live with the guilt of killing an innocent creature?”  
Joe sniffed and didn’t answer.

“Let’s assume you’re right,” Gerard said nervously, glancing back the way they’d come, “What should we do now?”  
“We could just walk away and leave him locked up,” Joe suggested hopefully.  
“We can't do that,” Andy sighed, “If we leave him here Beckett will kill him and we’d be responsible.” Looking thoughtfully at the pitiful creature behind the prison bars, he made a decision: “We'll have to take him with us.”  
“I knew you were gonna say that,” Joe grumbled.  
“Unlock the door, dude. Please.”  
Joe glared at Brendon for a few moments more, then sighed and lowered the crossbow. “Fine,” he muttered, “But if you’re wrong and this backfires on us I hope you’re ready to face the consequences.”

***  
With Joe's crossbow still aimed at him, Brendon led the hunters slowly back through the dungeons and upstairs into the charred lair. Outside over the graveyard the storm howled like a hurricane and the wet church floor was soupy with vampire remains. If Brendon felt any revulsion about so many of his own kind being trodden into mush underfoot then he didn’t show it. His large eyes were dazed and teary with exhaustion and he stumbled more than walked across the lair, occasionally groaning softly with pain. 

After passing the last few rows of dripping, puddled pews, the young vampire stopped in front of a large wall near the altar and gestured at the flat, grey stone. “There’s only one way in and out of Beckett’s room,” he explained tiredly, “And it's through here.”  
“That’s a wall,” Andy said flatly, staring at the damp stone.  
“Yes I know it‘s a wall. Wait a second,” Brendon muttered. Edging away from Joe’s crossbow, the vampire reached up and slid his cuffed hands under the charred remains of an ancient tapestry. Sliding his palms across the rough stone, he found some sort of notch in the brickwork and pressed it. There was a moment of heavy silence and then the entire section of wall began to move, rumbling backwards with a dull grinding sound and sliding aside to reveal a secret staircase hidden behind it. “That‘s so cool,” Gerard exclaimed, “I’ve gotta get one of those for my house!”  
Shoving Brendon at the newly-revealed steps, Joe jabbed the crossbow point into his back. “You first, fanger.”

At the top of the staircase was a small but grandly carved door that Brendon unbolted and pushed open to reveal a pitch black space looming cold and draughty before them. At Joe’s insistence, the vampire stepped in first and nearly walked right into a tall iron candlestick. All the candles had been extinguished and the chamber was masked in darkness. Leaning forward, Joe shone his flashlight around and illuminated some flashes of tiled floor, blood-flecked chains and a huge four-poster bed. When Brendon saw the bed he flinched and stepped back with a whimper, accidentally treading on Joe’s foot with his heavy boots. “Hey, watch it!” Joe hissed, smacking him with the side of the crossbow, “Is anyone in here?”  
“I’m not sure,” Brendon stammered, “My eyes hurt, I can't see too good.”  
“Wait,” Gerard whispered, “I hear something.”

Everybody froze, holding their breath and listened to the darkness until they heard a smothered sob. “There!” Joe whispered, swinging his flashlight at the far side of the room and catching a dark-haired young guy in its white beam. This kid looked about college-age and was dressed like Brendon in worn jeans and black boots, naked from the waist up. He was extremely thin and his ribs and back were striped with red scorch marks. Frozen in the glare, he shrank back against the wall. “Please don’t hurt me!” 

“Ryan?” Brendon gasped. The kid twitched bodily and squinted past the bright light. “Brendon?” he whimpered, “How can you be here? You're dead!”  
“This must be the other human prisoner,” Joe said, moving the light out of Ryan’s face as Gerard stepped forward. “Hey Ryan, my name's Gerard,” he said gently, “We’re here to help, man, don't be scared.”  
“Are you okay?” Brendon asked anxiously, trying to pull free of the tight grip Joe had on his arm. “Of course I’m not okay,” Ryan cried, “I'm in a fucking vampire's bedroom! Brendon, what happened to you? You look like you’ve been hit by a truck! At least…” Wiping his eyes, he peered closer at Brendon in the dim light and recoiled in sudden horror. “Fuck!” he gasped. “You’re a vampire aren't you. A shit-sucking fanger!”  
“No! Well l...yeah but it’s okay,” Brendon stammered desperately, “I’m not like other vampires!”  
“That remains to be seen,” Joe snorted.  
“We don’t have time for this,” Gerard interrupted, “Brendon’s not going to hurt you while we’re here, Ryan, I promise. The vampire in charge of this place is called William Beckett and this is his room. Do you know where he is?”

Shivering, Ryan folded his arms over his thin chest and glared at Brendon. “I know who Beckett is. The bastard was here earlier, just before that big crash downstairs and all the noise. He appeared out of nowhere like magic or something, wrapped in this smoke that smelt like death and he hurt me with this weird lightning that came out of his hands. Then he grabbed this other vampire who was apparently a prisoner here-”  
“Pete?” Andy asked eagerly, “Was his name Pete?”  
Ryan shrugged, his eyes half-closed, “Maybe. He had black hair if that helps. Couple of tattoos. Anyway, Beckett touched him and they vanished. Puft! Gone.”

“Did Beckett say where they were going?” Andy asked. “No,” Ryan sniffed, “But he did say something about going to see his Master. I thought that Beckett was the big master or whatever but I guess there's another vampire who outranks him.”  
“What?” Brendon gasped in terror, “Beckett's Master? Oh shit, we are so totally fucked! We're all dead!”  
“What are you talking about?” Andy asked, “Who is Beckett’s Master?”  
“The most powerful vampire in the world. You don't even know how powerful, he can cripple a human just by looking at them! Beckett calls him Lord Animus.”

***  
After Beckett appeared in the bedroom and attacked Ryan, he'd laid his hands on Pete’s shoulders and Pete felt the floor drop out from under him. For an instant the whole world was reduced to silence and shadows and then the floor came rushing back and a blast of motion-sickness shot through Pete's guts like a spear and made him vomit on the ancient marble floor which had magically appeared underneath him. Everything was different: he and Beckett were somehow in another place.

The bedchamber was gone, replaced by what looked like the inside of an old mausoleum: dark and windowless and choked with centuries of dust. As Pete’s eyes adjusted to the gloom he glimpsed two stacks of rotting black coffins piled behind Beckett and a few wrinkled corpses, barely more than bones, spilling out of the most damaged caskets onto the marble floor.  
Beckett grinned triumphantly and released his grip and Pete collapsed instantly, hitting the floor hard on his back, all the remaining strength sapped out of his body by the crackling crimson power in Beckett’s palms. He couldn’t move or speak, could barely even see anymore. Lying there shivering and helpless in the dust he looked up into Beckett’s soulless eyes and watched them burn and redden with hellfire. “Welcome to my Master’s new lair,” Beckett hissed, and he glanced up gleefully at someone or something emerging from the shadows at the far end of the mausoleum. Rolling weakly onto his stomach, Pete followed Beckett’s gaze across the tomb and what he saw there locked his weary mind in a vice of terror so deep he began to scream and couldn't stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \--- Thanks for reading! I am a very busy bee but I will spell-check and add chapters as often as I can. Warning: character death is on the way! xx ---


	6. Hot And Cold

“Is this Animus creature like the daddy of all vampires?” Andy asked nervously, pouring bitter black coffee into a row of chipped mugs on the old factory’s kitchen counter. The same counter where Pete used to mix his holy water and tomato juice drinks years ago. “I mean is he Dracula or something?”  
“The story of Dracula was based on rumours and folk tales,” Brendon said quietly, sipping from a glass of pig’s blood through a plastic straw, “But Lord Animus isn’t something people just made up. He's supposed to be older than books, older than civilisation! He rules us...vampires...by fear and none of us say his name unless we have to. I don’t know if he’s the original first vampire but he’s been around for thousands of years and he’s unbelievably powerful, more than Beckett will ever be. If he’s in town then you're all fucked. No offence.”

Anxiously stirring his coffee, Andy absorbed this information in silence and took a long sip of the hot steaming liquid. It didn’t do anything to calm his nerves. 

Joe wandered into the kitchen wearing clean clothes, his hair wet. “Shower's free,” he mumbled, slumping into a chair at the kitchen table and yawning loudly. Both of his arms were freshly bandaged to cover some cuts he’d received in the church battle and his blue eyes looked defeated and miserable. “Awesome,” Andy said, faking a smile, “Do you want something else to eat?” he added, nodding at the pile of empty take-out boxes on the kitchen table, “There’s still some pizza left.”  
“Nuh uh.”  
“Suit yourself.”  
“I see you've been feeding our new guest too,” Joe observed with some irritation, glaring at Brendon who was drinking his way through a third helping of animal blood. Since his hands were cuffed to one of the table’s legs the teenage vampire had to use a straw instead of picking up the glass. Andy had removed the prison shackles from his wrists just long enough to let him put on an old shirt of Pete’s but after that he'd been cuffed again. Nobody wanted him roaming free yet, especially not Joe who hadn’t wanted him anywhere near the factory to begin with, let alone inside it. 

Nearby, Ryan was sleeping fully-dressed on a pile of old couch cushions. Despite his young appearance he was actually in his late twenties and lived in a rented loft across town. He had no parents to miss him and after one phone-call to a friend to say he was alright he’d asked to stick around with the hunters for a while and help them fight. Nobody could think of a good reason for him not to, after all he deserved revenge against Beckett just as much as anyone.

Gerard was sitting on Patrick’s old desk speaking anxiously with Mikey on the phone. It was 2pm and the rain-storm still thundered over the town, keeping the sky in a state of permanent darkness.

After finding Ryan alone in Beckett’s room and hearing about Lord Animus, the hunters had made their way back to the factory to get some rest and come up with a new plan of action. Unfortunately they had no idea where to start looking for Animus, Beckett or Pete and Brendon seemed fresh out of ideas. Andy had taken a quick shower but sleep seemed impossible to find and he was doing everything he could to keep himself busy: buying in food, making coffee, fortifying the warehouse doors and watching Brendon because if he actually stopped for a while and thought about how some of his friends had been hospitalised today and how Pete was still missing, he’d probably start screaming and throwing things.

“Can I have some more?” Brendon asked, draining his glass with a slurp. “Sure,” Andy sighed, reaching for the cooler of pig’s blood belonging to Pete. Brendon had been drinking his way through it ever since they got back and the nourishment had activated his lightning-quick vampire healing abilities. Most of the cuts and bruises on his face were already fading. 

Gerard finally hung up the phone and drifted into the kitchen with an unlit cigarette in his mouth and a gloomy expression on his face. “Mikey says Patrick is doing fine but Frank is still unconscious even after the drugs and transfusions the docs gave him.”  
“He’ll be alright,” Andy said quickly.  
“Mm,” Gerard muttered doubtfully, pulling a lighter out of his blood-stained jacket and flicking the flame into life, watching it burn with tired eyes.  
“Gerard, the shower’s free if you wanna clean up,” Joe told him gently.  
“Ok. Thanks.”  
Dropping the lighter on the table, Gerard slouched off towards the bathroom and Joe sighed miserably into his coffee. “This is all my fault, Andy,” he whispered, “Frank getting hurt and everything. I’m the one who called them here to help us and if he dies I‘ll never forgive myself.”  
“Don‘t talk like that. Frank is gonna be fine,” Andy comforted, “And we all know the risks of the job. Whatever happens, no one will blame you. If you hadn’t called those guys Patrick and I might be dead right now. You did the right thing, ok?”  
Struggling to keep up a reassuring smile, Andy quickly turned away and began to tidy up the take-out boxes. If he'd stayed at the table for a little longer he would have seen the misery and guilt on Joe’s face slowly changing into blame and hatred as his tormented gaze settled on Brendon.

***  
“Come on, think!” Joe yelled, pacing angrily, “This isn’t a very big town, Brendon, and you promised to give us information. Where would Beckett and Animus hide? Fucking figure it out!” 

Brendon swallowed hard, racking his brain for an answer the hunter would like, and pulled nervously at the tight new chains Joe had locked on his arms. “I guess maybe large abandoned places? I don’t know. Beckett never shared secret information like that with me, I didn‘t even know Animus was in town until yesterday!”

“Do you at least know if he's been here before?” Mikey asked, looking up from where he was quietly carving a new stake out of a chair leg. “Uh huh,” Brendon nodded eagerly, relieved to be given a question he could answer, “Last year when all those people went missing in the meat-packing district? That was Animus. He killed them all and he was only here for two days.”  
“Holy smokes,” Patrick muttered quietly from the couch.  
“Wherever he is, he can't be more than a couple of miles away from the church,” Brendon added, “Beckett can only use magic to transport himself over short distances.”  
“The storm backs up that theory,” Patrick remarked over the noise of the unrelenting rain outside, “It said in the old Dracula legends that wherever the Master of vampires goes, rain clouds and thick mist follow him to help block out the sun.”  
Fidgeting restlessly, Brendon nodded in agreement, his eyes tired and red, “Yeah that's all true. Listen guys, I'm not used to being awake during the daytime. I'm starting to feel sick...”  
“Tough shit,” Joe sighed, “You can sleep after we find Pete.”

It was mid-afternoon the day after the battle at the church and the storm still raged on, flooding the streets with water and mud from the surrounding hills and turning day into a dim gray half-night. Patrick and Mikey had been discharged from the hospital that morning but Frank was still there and Gerard and Andy had gone to visit him with Ryan tagging along. Without Andy around there was no one to protect Brendon from Joe’s panic and anger and he was interrogating the young vampire hard to try and wring any information out of him that would rescue Pete and bring life back to normal. He didn't trust that Brendon was a good non-dangerous vampire for a second and Andy’s argument the day before hadn’t convinced him. 

To “encourage” Brendon to talk Joe had ripped the safety cover off a massive hot water pipe that ran from the den floor all the way up into the factory ceiling and heated most of the building. He'd then cut Brendon's shirt off with kitchen scissors and chained the vampire’s arms tightly around the pipe’s wide base so that the heated metal was pushed right up against his bare back. The thermostat was turned up high enough for the pipe to slowly reach boiling temperature and beyond. Worried sick about Frank and Pete and running on too much caffeine and not enough sleep, Joe was wound up so tight he couldn't think straight. Brendon looked anxious to say the least.

A few feet away Patrick was sitting cross-legged on the couch with a crossbow in his lap and fresh bandages on his neck, watching the situation escalate, and not really caring if Brendon was about to get hurt. So far today the vampire hadn't acted like much of a threat, allowing himself to be chained up and interrogated even though enough of his strength must have returned by now for him to enthral one of the hunters and force them to let him go. But the fact that Brendon was being quiet and obedient didn’t comfort Patrick at all: it just creeped him out. He still hadn’t forgiven Brendon for lying in the dungeons about Joe being dead and while it was true that the kid had been an innocent boy once upon a time, he was a vampire now and had terrorized and fed off innocent people for years rather than risk his own skin by running away.

“Did Animus live in the meat-packing district last year,” Joe asked, “Or was he just going there to feed?”  
“I really don’t know,” Brendon insisted, shifting uncomfortably as the pipe grew hotter against his shirtless body, “I had nothing to do with him, I never even saw him. I just heard about it through the grapevine. Can't you chain me to something else, Joe? This thing's really hot. We can talk like civilized people can't we?”  
“You're not a person,” Joe snapped, pulling up a chair in front of the shackled vampire and taking a seat, “And don’t try to get out of this by using mind-tricks on me either because Patrick will shoot you if you try.”  
“I won’t,” Brendon protested, his eyes wide, “But, honestly, you have to believe me! I don’t know what else I can say. I don't have much information about anything, probably cuz Beckett didn't trust me enough, and I’m sorry for everything bad I’ve done. I never wanted to do any of it but I was scared and I felt like I had no choice. I want to be you on your side now, I swear, just give me a chance! You’ll see, I really-”  
“Oh stop it!” Joe interrupted angrily, “Quit messing with us and tell us what you’re really doing here.”  
Brendon blinked in confusion, “What do you mean?”  
“I mean that I'm not buying this little act of yours. All the crying and hurting yourself and helping us find Ryan...it was all part of Beckett’s plan wasn’t it? Your job is to mislead and distract us while he and Animus do God knows what!”  
“No!” Brendon cried in horror, pulling at his chains again, this time in desperation, “I’m not lying! None of this is fake. Beckett fucking beat me half to death!”

“Did he?” Joe grunted, “Maybe you deserved it after biting so many people against their will.”  
“I didn’t deserve…that,” Brendon insisted, his eyes shining red with fresh tears as heat waves rippled in the air around the pipe, “I-I don’t deserve any of this, nobody does. I was just a kid who got attacked one day on my way home from band practice. I’ve never killed anyone and I tried not to hurt them, I really tried! Beckett hurt me because I’ve been disobeying him, don’t you get it? I’m co-operating with you, why are you doing this to me?”  
“Because I don’t think you’ve told us everything,” Joe yelled, his eyes wild and scared, “Pete could die if you don’t tell me the truth! Do you even care about that? My friend could DIE!”  
“Of course I care, I don’t want anyone to die but I AM telling you the truth, I don’t know anything!” Brendon cried, baring his fangs. With his arms chained tightly around the huge hissing pipe, the vampire couldn’t move away even a millimetre as it began to scald his skin. “Fuck! Unchain me, please, it hurts!”  
“Not before you’ve told me everything.”  
“I have!”  
“No, you haven’t.”  
“I have! Dammit!”  
“But give me one good reason why I should believe you. You lied to Andy and Patrick last night and you’ve been one of Beckett’s right hand boys for years but you never tried to escape before so please tell me why I should trust you.”

Speechless and in pain, Brendon stared at the hunters open-mouthed, unable to think of anything he could say to prove his loyalty. The pipe against his back was steaming hot from the volcano of boiling water rushing through it and he trembled and squirmed as it scorched his skin a violent red and sweat ran down his face and neck. “Please!” he begged, “Don‘t do this to me! I’m sorry I lied in the dungeon but I’m telling the truth now I SWEAR! Andy believed me, why wouldn‘t you listen to him?”  
“Because Andy tries to see something good in everyone around him,” Joe admitted fondly, “Even blood-sucking monsters like you.”  
“Chain me to something else, please! It's burning me!”  
“Was Animus living in the meat-packing district last year?”  
“I don‘t know! Probably? OWW-WWW! STOP IT, PLEASE!”  
“You said he’s been around for millennia and moves around a lot, travels the world, so what kind of places does he usually hang out in?”

Straining against the chains until they dug and cut into his flesh, Brendon screwed his eyes shut and screamed hoarsely as the metal pipe grew even hotter and his skin burned away in smoking layers. When he opened his eyes again they were glassy and wet with agony. “Old places,” he sobbed through gritted fangs, “Crypts, c-castles, or underground. Or p-places with a h-history of death...PLEASE, M-MAKE IT STOP!!”  
“Where are those places in this town then?” Joe persisted, ignoring the vampire’s suffering, “Where would he go HERE?”  
“I DON‘T KNOW!”  
“You were born in this place, Brendon, you know its streets. WHERE WOULD ANIMUS GO?”  
“I DON’T KNOW!!”

Patrick heard Brendon’s flesh sizzling as it blistered and burned down to the muscle and it was making him feel sick. This didn’t seem justified anymore, even if Brendon was a fanger. “PLEASE!” the vampire wept, writhing in agony against the scalding metal, “LET ME LOOSE! I DON‘T KNOW, I DON’T KNOW!”

Unable to watch anymore, Patrick jumped up and ran to the back door, bursting through it into the cold rain outside with his stomach churning. As much as he hated Brendon, he couldn’t stand to see anyone being tortured like that, it was horrible and wrong and he felt dirty inside like something evil had crawled into his body. The smell of scorched flesh still filled his nose and mouth and he gulped unsteady breaths of air, trying very hard not to vomit as the rain soaked through his hair and clothes. 

Moments later the bright headlamps of Andy’s car came swimming up the driveway towards him and he flinched guiltily at the sight. The car parked quietly and Andy, Ryan and Gerard got out and ran for the factory door to escape the deluge but Andy stopped when he saw Patrick standing there in the downpour. “You shouldn’t be out here, Trick. What’s happened?”  
“Joe is, er, well…” Patrick stammered, unable to look his friend in the eyes. Andy frowned suspiciously and was about to say something else when a boom of thunder shook the air and Patrick shivered and shut his eyes as he heard Brendon screaming along with the sky. 

***  
“Joe, you idiot!” Andy yelled furiously, “Brendon is our only link to Beckett, he helped us find Ryan and he might be our only way of finding Pete, and you tortured him? What the hell were you thinking!”  
“Hey, I was doing what I had to do,” Joe answered angrily, “Brendon isn’t a real boy, Andy, he’s a vampire, a demon living inside a dead high school senior, and we don’t have any real proof that he’s still got a soul like Pete. I mean don’t you think it’s a little convenient that he decided to switch sides and help us exactly when we needed him the most?”  
“Not really, no!” Andy snapped, “I agree that he saw his chance to leave with us and he took it, but when did he ever get a single decent chance to leave with back-up before last night?” 

“I do wanna h-help, honest,” Brendon sniffled in a shaking voice, “I didn’t lie abou that.”  
“I know, Brendon, it‘s okay,” Andy said gently, “You’re gonna be alright.”

The vampire was lying on his stomach on the kitchen table minus his chains and surrounded by first aid supplies while Andy and Gerard carefully sliced away the worst of the blackened, burnt flesh on his arms and back and cleaned the gaping wounds so they could heal properly. It was gruesome work and Andy had made Brendon drink from a very large bottle of whiskey until he was too drunk to feel the worst of the pain. “’M’sorry, y‘know,” the vampire slurred, resting his cheek against the table and making the smooth wood slippery with his tears, “I shouldna been so scared...”  
“Shhhh,” Andy murmured sympathetically, “You don‘t have to be sorry.”  
“Stop talking to him like he’s a child,” Joe grumbled, “It’s warped!”  
“He pretty much is a child,” Andy retorted, “He was seventeen years old when he was turned, Joe, he’s a baby vampire, and he’s gone through about as much suffering as he can take in the last couple of days so leave him alone, okay? Worry about yourself for once. You’re exhausted, man. Take a time-out, get some sleep. This whole thing just got way out of control.”  
Biting his tongue, Joe shook his head in exasperation and walked away with his hands in the air. Andy sighed and uncapped a fresh bottle of antiseptic.  
“He was just trying to help,” Mikey said quietly from the shadows beyond the kitchen.  
“Well he didn’t did he,” Gerard sighed, “And because of this mess we’ve lost some time that we could have spent looking for Pete.”

***  
Pete awoke groggy and hurting in an icy darkness so thick he was as good as blind, and a drumming pain in his head immediately made him wish he was still unconscious. Through alternating spasms of numbness and pain he felt a hard slick metal floor under his legs and back and his battered body was chilled to the bone. He could smell his own blood and the tang of rusty iron and old meat and the darkness in this place was total and complete. For one horrified second he thought he’d been locked in a coffin and buried alive, but coffins weren’t usually made out of metal and they definitely weren’t this cold. 

Turning his head just a fraction, he gasped as fresh daggers of pain drilled into his neck and skull and realised that it hurt to even breathe this frosty sub-zero air. He was shivering badly which only made the pain worse and his aching head was so foggy he had no idea where he was or how long he’d been here. This could be anywhere. Maybe it was hell.

Groaning in agony, he forced one of his frozen hands to move and then his arm and touched his neck where it hurt the most. Even with numb fingers he could still trace the outline of deep puncture wounds in his flesh and icy chunks of blood stuck to his skin. Beckett had fed from him. Nearly drained him completely.

Rolling weakly onto his side, Pete bit his tongue against another moan of pain and curled his broken shivering body into a ball to try and find any scrap of warmth but as a vampire he generated no body heat and could only be as warm as the air around him. Ice crystals crackled on his clothes and his hair was matted into wet scratchy clumps. He had to get out of here, he had to get on his feet. But even though there were no cuffs or chains holding him down this time he doubted he could even get on his hands and knees, let alone his stand up. Blood loss and hunger had made him so weak he was surprised he was even conscious right now. He was going to die soon. All alone.

Searching his blurry mind, the last thing he could remember was so horrific that the memory of it hit him with a wave of crushing fear and he gagged in revulsion and terror as tears sprang to his eyes and quickly froze on his cheeks. Weeping ashamed in the darkness he shook his head helplessly against the awful vision in his brain, begging it to go away but it wouldn’t stop haunting him: worse than a demon or the devil itself, a monster of pure unadulterated Fear was walking the earth like a grim reaper in a gruesome mass of fangs and flesh. He had seen it with his own eyes and nothing would ever come close to being as terrifying as what he had glimpsed in the abyss of that evil creature’s black-hole face. Looking into that demonic thing’s eyes had made Pete feel like he was dying from the inside out and now he shuddered and wept at only the memory as it burrowed like a maggot into his brain. Tears of despair froze his eyelids shut. He didn’t want to die here but that monster in the mausoleum had dragged him into an icy grave and there was nothing left but silence and darkness and pain. The bitter cold air stank of decay and the death in his blood and he couldn’t remember what it felt like to be warm or anything other than afraid. His skin was freezing solid. He could barely stay awake. It wouldn't be long now.  
Even vampires can die.

***  
“If Brendon really is telling the truth,” Joe said grudgingly, “Then I say we split up and check all the oldest buildings in town and anything built on the site of gruesome murders or old battlefields.”  
“Plus all the major cemeteries,” Andy added, “Animus could be hiding in a crypt or burial vault.”  
“Yeah…he likes to be near the dead,” Brendon mumbled, leaning woozily over a plastic bucket half full of whiskey puke, “You should check any m-mass graves too.”

“There are six cemeteries within the city limits,” Andy sighed, scrolling through a map on his iphone, “Lot of deaths in this burg. Three of them are big enough to have mausoleums and burial vaults. No mass graves though.”  
“None that we know of,” Patrick said quietly, “This is an old town and its history of violence goes back to colonial times. The fact that so many vampires have decided to nest here kind of suggests this place is a strong source of dark energy.”  
Gerard frowned. “What the hell is dark energy?”  
“It’s what we call the mystical force that gives vampire masters their superhuman powers,” Andy explained, “Patrick thinks it’s created by the trauma and suffering of violent deaths.”  
“That’s the theory,” Patrick agreed, his eyes hidden behind his hair as he gazed down numbly at a silver stake in his hands. “I’ve been researching it for a while and whatever it is, it strengthens vampires and helps them become Masters. If a large amount of it exists in this town it would explain why Beckett has enough power to create electrical energy and teleport himself and Pete around. It also might explain why Animus bothered to come here in the first place.”  
“Okay, so logically Animus would want to camp out as close to the source of this dark energy as possible, right?” Gerard reasoned.  
“Yeah,” Patrick said hesitantly, “But there's no way for humans to sense dark energy hotspots. We don‘t have the ability.”  
“Alright,” Joe nodded, “But I bet a vampire who was sired by a Master could sense it.”  
As one the hunters turned to look at Brendon. 

“You think I can find it?” Brendon huffed, almost laughing in disbelief, “I'm still fucking drunk and I feel worse than shit tonight. My powers aren’t very impressive even when I am healthy. All I can do is a bit of thrall.”  
“It’s still worth a shot,” Patrick said, looking up hopefully.  
“Yeah,” Andy agreed, “Let’s drive Brendon around the oldest, spookiest graves and places in town and see if he’s drawn to any particular place.”  
“Sounds like a plan,” Mikey shrugged.  
Everyone except Brendon nodded.  
“Great!” Joe said happily, relaxing visibly, “Finally we can get off our asses and do something! I’ll go start the car.” Shrugging on a raincoat, he grabbed his keys and walked out the factory’s rear door into the rain. 

The door had barely closed behind him when a dozen gunshots rang out of the storm, pounding the outside of the factory walls with a hail of destruction. Everyone left inside the building either froze in surprise or dropped to the floor, staring wide-eyed at the door through which Joe had just left. The shots had come from right outside. “Joe?” Andy cried, his voice hoarse with dread, “Joe!”


	7. Dead Meat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \--- Sorry its been nearly a week between updates - won't be so long next time! x ---

“Joe!” Andy hollered, running headlong for the door and whatever danger lay beyond it until Gerard grabbed his arms and jerked him to a halt. “Let me go,” he cried, “Joe’s out there!”  
“And so is whoever shot at him!” Gerard gasped as the echo of gunshots faded into the sound of falling rain, “It’s not safe, Andy.”

As if to confirm this, a deep voice magnified by a megaphone suddenly spoke up from outside: ‘THIS IS THE POLICE, ACTING UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF OUR MASTER WILLIAM BECKETT. YOU ARE UNDER ARREST. WE HAVE THE BUILDING SURROUNDED. YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES TO SURRENDER.’  
“They’ll kill us all,” Ryan whispered, turning pale.  
“We have to get out of here!" Brendon cried.  
“Obviously,” Gerard agreed, “Is there any way out of here the cops won‘t know about?”  
“It doesn‘t matter,” Andy sobbed, “Let me go, Joe needs us!”  
“There’s a secret exit. Kind of,” Patrick mumbled shakily, “A trapdoor in the kitchen. It leads down to the sewers.”

While they were talking Mikey crept over to the closed side-door and knelt down with his eye to the keyhole. What he saw nearly made his heart stop. Parked outside were four police cars surrounded by a dozen armed vampire cops and a full S.W.A.T team dressed in black. Their guns were still smoking in the rain. Closer to the door, barely three feet away, Joe was lying motionless in a puddle of blood and rain. His blue eyes were open and staring blankly into the downpour and there were five bloody bullet holes in his chest. “Fuck!” Mikey gasped, scrambling away from the door as everyone turned to look at him and saw their worst fears confirmed on his face.  
“They killed him,” Andy whispered, “For real, they...oh god!” Sobbing loudly, Andy went limp in his friend's grasp and Gerard gently let him go as he sank to his knees on the floor and slammed his shaking hands into the concrete in anguish as he wept, “No, god, please no...”

For about a minute no one else spoke and Gerard gazed warily at Patrick waiting for a similar display of grief but the youngest hunter was just standing there looking dazed and empty. His blue-green eyes weren’t crying yet and his face was pale and blank almost like he’d checked out of his head. Maybe he was going into shock instead of hysteria, but shock could be just as bad. Worse even.  
Gerard sucked in a deep breath and reluctantly took charge. “Okay,” he announced loudly, trying to keep his voice steady, “Let’s get out of here. Mikey, take Patrick to the kitchen and get that trapdoor open. Brendon and Ryan grab as many supplies as you can; coats, weapons, anything you can carry. I’ll help Andy. Go!” 

The guys scattered to obey, their steps echoing on the factory floor, and Gerard knelt down with Andy and awkwardly patted his shoulder. “We can’t go yet,” Andy sniffed brokenly, shaking his head, “We can’t leave Joe with them. His b-body, they might...”  
“Whatever they do to him he won’t feel it anymore,” Gerard said gently, “Joe’s safe now, Andy. He died with his gear on, y'know, a hunter till the end. They‘ll never be able to hurt him again.”  
Sobbing bitterly, Andy let out a low groan of despair, his tears dripping onto the concrete. “I don’t want to leave him!”  
“You have to, man, I’m sorry. We have to go now. We have to protect you and Patrick and find Pete, just like Joe wanted. Okay?”

Swallowing hard, Andy nodded and wiped his streaming eyes and nose on his shirt, getting unsteadily to his feet. Gerard rose with him and stepped back hesitantly. When Andy turned to look at him his eyes were burning with anger and pain. “I’m going to make them pay for this,” he whispered, “I swear on my life, I’ll make Beckett bleed for taking Joe away..."

***  
“Anything yet?” Gerard asked, peering through the windshield at the flooded road. “No,” Brendon answered sulkily, “All I can feel is my hangover.”  
The surviving hunters and vampire were making tracks through the stormy night in a stolen SUV after emerging from the sewers in a dark, derelict corner of town. Gerard was driving while Brendon rode shotgun. Ryan, Mikey and Andy sat on the middle seat and Patrick was in the back with their small stockpile of weapons. They had managed to avoid the undead police for now but Andy was in full vengeance-mode and wanted to kill every vampire they came into contact with until they found Pete. Things weren’t off to a great start.  
“Enough with the smart-ass answers,” Gerard scolded, steering the vehicle down another weather-beaten street, “Try harder.”  
“Maybe I would if I knew what I was supposed to be feeling or sensing or whatever,” Brendon snapped edgily, “I became a vampire inside this town, I wasn’t drawn to it by dark energy, so if there's a big evil bat-sign hanging in the sky somewhere I don't know how to find it.”

“Come on Bren,” Ryan urged softly, speaking to Brendon for the first time in two days, “They need you to keep trying.” Surprised, Brendon turned round in his seat to look at his old friend but Ryan had already averted his eyes and was staring out at the falling rain. By ‘they’ he of course meant Andy and Patrick, who had now seen one of their best friends kidnapped and the other one killed.  
With Pete still missing and hope fading, Patrick had lost all his confidence and was too shell-shocked by Joe’s violent death to show any real grief. Instead he seemed to be slipping back and forth between sweaty, twitchy anxiety and a kind of helpless dazed shock and was a shaky mess, curled up on the backseat making feverish notes on his ipad and not talking to anyone. Meanwhile Andy had moved way past tears and was dangerously focused on payback. He sat hunched forward and tense in his seat, glaring out at the storm with a silver stake clutched in his white-knuckled hands and only moved when Patrick got so panicky he needed someone to slap him out of it.

“You’re our only connection to Beckett,” Gerard reminded Brendon quietly, “If you can’t find him then Pete is as good as dead and you become useless to us.”  
“So no pressure then?” Brendon mumbled.

“Take a left up here,” Ryan instructed as the car sped towards a flooded crossroads. He knew this town like the back of his hand and had been giving Gerard directions for the last two hours, guiding the hunters to any abandoned or old death-related places he could think of. So far they had searched three cemeteries and four condemned buildings and found nothing but a couple of surly punk vampires watching MTV whom Andy and Mikey had slain in seconds.

As per Ryan’s instructions, Gerard drove into the desolate expanse of the town’s old meat-packing district: a dense collection of abandoned factories, warehouses and storage sheds. Boarded-up buildings towered like tombs on both sides of the road and abandoned processing plants and empty parking lots stretched for several blocks in every direction. Ten years ago this whole area had been a thriving industry but when the vampires began to take over many business owners up and left for sunnier climates. The mysterious massacre of several meat-packing workers last year had been the final nail in this area's coffin.

In the dark sky lightning flashed, bathing the empty streets in white strobes as rain drowned the sidewalks and frothed angrily out of blocked storm drains. Gerard glanced worriedly at the fuel gauge and frowned. “Still nothing?” he sighed after a few more minutes. “Nope,” Brendon confirmed, sitting sideways to avoid putting pressure on his sore, bandaged back, “All I’m getting is a headache.”  
“Maybe he’s too young,” Ryan offered, “His powers aren’t developed enough.”  
“He’s all we’ve got,” Andy said frostily, “Try the graveyard up ahead.”

Stepping on the gas, Gerard drove past a water-logged packing plant towards a bleak field dotted with the decrepit mausoleums and headstones of Grey’s Hill Cemetery. This sloping stony graveyard had once been owned by the wealthiest family in the city but had been left to rot when the vampire epidemic persuaded the whole clan to relocate to California. The SUV was purring between the buildings at the foot of Grey’s Hill when Brendon suddenly gave a loud, agonized moan and clutched his head.  
“What?” Andy asked instantly.  
“I don’t know. My head just started hurting like a bitch. Argh!”  
“He’s sensing something,” Ryan guessed, “Stop the car!”

Gerard hit the brakes and the SUV squelched to a stop half-way between the burial ground and a row of dark cold-storage sheds. Leaning forwards, Andy flipped on the interior lights and illuminated Brendon who was groaning quietly and cradling his head in his hands. “Brendon, what do you feel?” he asked anxiously, “Talk to us.”  
“It’s cold…I’m s-so so cold,” Brendon gasped, shivering.  
“How can he be cold?” Ryan asked, “The heater's on, it’s boiling in here.”  
“Cold…dark…I can‘t see! It's so dark,” Brendon babbled, shivering more violently now and dragging his bitten-down fingernails over his cheeks, leaving red scratches in his skin, “Let me out of here! Let me out!”  
“What’s he talking about?” Gerard muttered, edging as far away as he could from the distraught vampire which wasn't very far.  
“Freezing...h-help me!” Brendon sobbed, “LET ME OUT! I don't like it here. I can't see!” His brown and yellow eyes were wide open but completely spaced out and glassy and in his mind he obviously wasn't in the warm, well-lit car anymore with the hunters gathered around him. “He’ll find me in the dark,” he whimpered, “Don’t let him find me... fuck!”

“Who are you talking about?” Ryan asked in confusion.  
“I don’t think he can hear us,” Mikey observed.  
The vampire huddled against the passenger door, scrabbling at the car walls, his teeth chattering, “Get away from me!” he pleaded, “Go away!” Writhing and twisting away from thin air, he looked like he was struggling against an invisible attacker. “GET AWAY FROM ME!” he screamed, “LET ME OUT, LET ME GO!”  
“I can‘t deal with this,” Patrick groaned, shaking his head.  
“Brendon!” Ryan cried.  
“LET ME OUT!” Brendon howled in terror, clawing at his seat and clothes as blood soaked through the back of his shirt.  
“Brendon, take a breath,” Andy said, grabbing the vampire’s arm in exasperation, “Snap out of it!”

As soon as Andy touched him, Brendon stopped struggling and fighting and his eyes regained their focus. Gasping a few hoarse breaths of warm air, he stared around in surprise at the SUV, still shivering, and then hugged his knees to his scrawny chest and buried his face in them, rocking himself back and forth, back and forth. “Er, Brendon?” Gerard asked cautiously, “Are you back with us? Can you hear me?”  
“Uh huh,” Brendon sobbed in a muffled voice.  
“Well can you look at us then?” Andy said impatiently. Reluctantly, Brendon lifted his face off his knees, crimson teardrops painting his jeans and cheeks.  
“What happened just now?” Andy pressed, “What did you see?”  
“I w-wasn’t here,” Brendon croaked, shaking his head in amazement, “There were these weird flashes in my eyes and then everything went dark. So dark, darker than night and I was blind, and it was s-so cold! I was freezing, dying. I felt it. Animus was there...hurting me.”  
“Okay,” Gerard said slowly, looking confused. 

“This is the place,” Brendon added as watery snot ran from his nose and he wiped it on his sleeve like a five-year-old, “Animus and Beckett are here at Grey’s Hill. They wanna kill us all, Andy, I can feel it! There’s a darkness here like nothing I've ever known. It feels like dying.”  
“Is Animus in the cemetery or the storage sheds?” Andy asked, looking out the windows. “Both,” Brendon answered, rubbing his eyes with a trembling hand, “They’re linked underground with tunnels. I can see them in my head but I don't know how. Why can I see them?”  
“We’ll figure that out later,” Andy said, “First let's get Pete back and stake the bastards who took him.” 

***  
Armed and ready, the hunters climbed out of the car and into the rain. “You too, Brendon,” Andy ordered, “You’re coming with us.” Hunkering down fearfully in his seat, Brendon shook his head. “No way am I going in there.”  
“Yes you are. We need your visions or whatever they are to guide us. Now get out.”  
“But you don’t understand,” Brendon begged, biting his lip, “It’s not just that I’m scared, Andy. Animus could get to me in there, he can find my mind and enthral me, make me do bad things. Please don't force me to go!”  
“I said get out!” Andy roared, pulling a wooden stake from his coat and jabbing it towards Brendon’s chest.  
“Andy!” Ryan cried. Quivering with anger, Andy turned to see all the others staring at him. “What?” he snapped, “Brendon’s coming with us and I don’t have time to talk him into it!”  
“Okay but please calm down,” Patrick begged, looking nervously at the darkened buildings around them, “You like Brendon, remember?”  
“Get. Out.” Andy commanded stonily, pushing the stake’s tip against Brendon’s coat. With a rueful glare, Brendon clambered out of the car and stood looking sulkily at Andy through the rain. Andy sighed and lowered the stake, “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, “Quit looking at me like that.”

Thunder boomed in the black heavens and a monsoon-like deluge of rain was washing floods of muddy water down from Grey’s Hill, swirling murkily around the hunters’ ankles. A large storage shed stood nearby in the darkness, shuttered up and blacked out. There were no working street-lamps for half a mile in every direction from here and the dense rain had reduced the yellow beams of Andy, Patrick and Gerard’s flashlights to weak flickers in the storm. The temperature was dropping and the wind howled like a demon over the water and stung the hunters’ faces with horizontal spray. Even the weather itself was under the control of evil.  
Do you think this is a trap?” Ryan said over the thunder as they marched towards the metal door of the shed, “Cos it kinda feels like it is.”  
“It doesn’t matter,” Andy said grimly, “I used to think Pete was too obsessed with revenge but I get it now, I fucking get it and I'm not leaving until Beckett is dust!”  
“Brendon, can you sense exactly who’s inside?” Gerard asked.  
“No,” the vampire answered, blinking rain from his eyes.  
“Great,” Mikey muttered, “We’re going in blind.”  
“Anybody wanna open the door?” Ryan asked.

Surprisingly it was Patrick who splashed forwards, his boots making ripples in the water, and turned the door’s steel handle. It wasn’t locked. Pushing it open he stepped back as a wave of frozen air billowed out with the smell of raw meat and then walked in, biting his lip and holding his flashlight in front of him. The others followed.

Walking into the shed was like walking into Antarctica, the cold was so intense, and the whole place was as dark and silent as a tomb. The glow of the flashlight glinted down an empty corridor illuminating several large steel doors along it, most of which were closed. Their rusty edges were encrusted with frost.

Tensed for an attack, Andy pushed past Patrick and walked purposefully up to the first steel door, cranking the stiff handle and pulling it open, his crossbow already aimed, but inside was nothing but a large meat locker. A few metal hooks hung motionless from the shadowy ceiling but beneath them the locker was bare. “Let's search the others?” Patrick suggested anxiously, his breath misting in the frozen air. Without a word, Andy moved to the next door along while Gerard took the one opposite and Patrick followed Ryan and Mikey further down the passage to the others. The meat locker behind Andy’s door was as empty as the first and so was the first one Ryan tried but when Gerard opened his door he cried out “Oh! Fuck! Oh fuck!”

This locker was filled with human corpses. At least eight naked bodies were strung up on hooks like slaughtered animals with their necks and thighs torn apart by fangs. Dead blue skin and frostbitten fingernails sparkled like sick little diamonds in the flashlights and over a dozen dead white eyes stared out at the hunters. The violent stink of congealed blood washed into the corridor and everybody gagged and stumbled backwards in horror on trembling legs as Ryan covered his eyes with a whimper and Patrick doubled over and vomited on the cold floor, dropping his flashlight. Gerard’s face turned ghost-white and Mikey stared open-mouthed as the horror scorched deep into his eyes. Even Brendon looked so disgusted and sickened that Andy was absolutely sure now that the young vampire still had a soul.  
“What...what is that?” Patrick panted queasily, shivering as rain and cold-sweat dripped from his hair. “It’s a larder,” Brendon said hoarsely, “Animus’s larder.”  
Shaking his head, Gerard slammed the locker shut again to hide its terrible contents and covered his face with his hands. “I tried to tell you,” Brendon whimpered, “I said Animus was death! We shouldn’t have come here. We should leave while we still can!” 

“Not without Pete,” Andy said with difficulty, swallowing the bile that had risen in his throat, thinking of Joe still lying dead in the rain. “We’re all in this together, and we can’t go home without him.”  
“I need him back,” Patrick agreed, scooping up his flashlight from the slippery floor, “And he must be here somewhere, right? I mean he has to be.” 

There were three doors left. Behind door number one was a frozen pig carcass like the kind you’d see in a butcher’s shop. Behind door number two was a lonely ice-encrusted corpse wasted down to just skin and bones and judging by its fangs it had once been a vampire. “Could it have starved to death?” Brendon whispered in horror and awe, “I didn't know we could do that.”

The third door was the largest and furthest away and the group approached it together with their weapons drawn, moving quietly until Brendon suddenly grabbed his head like he’d done in the car and collapsed to his knees mumbling incoherently about blood and death until Mikey smacked him with the blunt side of his sword and brought him back to reality. “What did you see?” Andy hissed, looking warily at the door before them, “What’s in there?”  
“Dead things,” Brendon panted, his eyes wide with pain, “The dead eat the dead here.”  
Andy gritted his teeth and patted Brendon on the shoulder, “Alright, kid. Let's check it out.”

Holding his crossbow and flashlight, Andy used his foot to shove open the door and strode inside. “Holy shit!”  
“What? What is it?” Patrick blurted.  
“It's Pete,” Andy cried, moving deeper into the freezing cold of the last meat locker and kneeling by his lost friend’s body, “We've found him!”

Pete was lying motionless on the cold floor on his side with his eyes closed, not even breathing. He was dressed in the same street clothes he’d been wearing two days ago but now they were torn and stiff with frozen blood and his skin was a frightening shade of pale blue. His hair, lips and eyelids were encrusted with red-tinted frost and if he’d been human Andy would have assumed he was long dead. 

“Is he… Are we too late?” Gerard asked.  
“I don’t know,” Andy mumbled, frantically examining Pete’s frozen, bloodied face, “It looks like he hasn’t been healing and he’s not breathing either, but vampires don’t need to breathe all the time so he could still come back from this right?”  
“We have to get him out of here, come on!” Patrick spluttered, his eyes welling with tears.

Springing into action, the hunters lifted Pete’s body off the ground and Patrick caught sight of the deep puncture wounds in the vampire’s neck. “Something’s been feeding on him,” he gasped, “Oh man, he needs fresh blood like right now or he won‘t make it. His body won’t be able to cope with the temperature change in the car. It has to be human blood, he’s too far gone for anything else!”  
“He can have some of mine,” Andy said instantly, “I have a knife in the car.”

While they were talking, Brendon stayed out in the corridor alone, shivering miserably in his damp coat. Out of respect for Joe he hadn’t complained about his burns but they were hurting him badly as they healed millimetre by millimetre and he felt feverish and sick. The crippling pain in his head was also still bothering him even though it had dulled to a throbbing ache behind his eyes, and he could feel the presence of the Master vampires nearby scratching at his senses. Any second now he expected to hear an evil hiss in his mind commanding him to do something bad. “No,” he whispered fearfully to himself as Andy and the others came out of the locker, “No, I won’t do it. Andy, hey you have to tie me up again.”  
Andy frowned, slinging his crossbow strap over his shoulder, “What?”  
“You have to chain me up,” Brendon repeated anxiously, “Or knock me out. I’m dangerous! Take me down. Do it now!”  
Andy stopped walking while the others carried Pete out to the car and Ryan hesitated as well, not sure if he should stay or go. “Stop being so cryptic Brendon. What are you talking about?”  
“Beckett and Animus can enthral other vampires from a distance,” Brendon explained anxiously, “I tried to tell you in the car but you wouldn’t listen and now...”  
The young vampire suddenly fell silent and his eyes went completely blank.  
“Brendon?” Andy asked in puzzlement, shining his flashlight at the vampire and snapping his fingers in front of his face, “Hey, what's wrong?”  
“He’s found us,” Brendon whispered as his wide eyes flashed yellow, “Run!”  
“Brendon?” Ryan whimpered, “What-?”  
Baring his fangs, Brendon snarled like a wild animal and slammed a fist into Andy’s face, snapping the hunter’s head back and knocking him out before turning on Ryan and tackling him to the ground before he could even scream.

***  
“Andy?” Patrick called, turning back towards the dark shed doorway with his heart leaping into his throat, he could have sworn he just heard a loud crash.  
“Patrick, yo, get in the car,” Gerard called from the SUV where he and Mikey were lying Pete down across the middle seat.  
“Andy and the others didn’t follow us out,” Patrick fretted as he jogged over through the flood, scratching at the sopping wet bandages on his neck. “Something’s wrong.”  
“Oh boy,” Gerard muttered, “Okay. You guys stay here and feed Pete. I’ll go check it out.”  
“Wait Gee, let me back you up,” Mikey said, grabbing his brother’s arm. Gerard shook him off. “Not this time. If I’m not back in one minute get out of here guys. I mean it.”

Armed with some knives and a short wooden sword, Gerard walked quickly back to the shed, his boots slipping around in the watery mud. “Andy?” he called cautiously, shining his flashlight through the open shed doorway. “Brendon? Ryan? Come on guys, don’t make me go back in there.”  
No one answered.  
Taking a deep breath, Gerard darted inside and found the lone cold corridor completely deserted. “What the hell?” he muttered, “Guys?” Creeping up and down the short passage, he was about to start checking inside the meat lockers when - BANG - the shed door slammed shut behind him. “Fuck,” he hissed, his heart racing as the word ‘trap’ flashed through his brain like a neon sign. Running back to the door, he looked for a handle and found out there was none. It had been torn off: the door could only be opened from the outside.  
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he groaned, chills running down his spine as the icy darkness closed in all around him. “Andy! Ryan! Where the fuck did you go?”

BOOOOOOOOOOMM! A deafening blast of thunder exploded out of the sky outside so loud that the shed walls shook and Gerard covered his ears with his hands, accidentally dropping the flashlight. It hit the floor with a clang and died, leaving him in the pitch dark. “Guys, where are you?” he called desperately as fear flooded his veins with ice water, “Answer me!”  
Still no one replied.  
Shivering and blind in the black, Gerard shuddered as he remembered the frozen corpses strung up bloated and grey in the “larder” just a few feet away from him. He never should have come back in here alone. “Help! Mikey!” he yelled, banging hard on the locked door with the butt of his sword. “Hey!” Maybe his brother had already left.  
'Come on Gerard', he told himself, 'there has to be another way out of here. How else did Andy and the others get out?' Then something large and snarling moved beside him in the darkness and he realized the truth as cold hands of iron muscle tore his sword away and tightened in a vice around his neck.

***  
The rain continued to gush down, soaking Patrick to the skin and forcing him to shelter inside the SUV. Snuffling and shivering with cold, he sat down beside Pete's body and shook his friend’s shoulder to try and wake him but the vampire was completely out of it and looked way beyond dead, even by undead standards. Terrified, Patrick ran his hands through his wet hair and forced himself not to start bawling as the backs of his eyes grew hot and prickly. He felt like his insides had been replaced by a black hole and there was nothing he could do about it. Joe was gone forever and Pete who was usually so brave and strong could be fading away and dying too, right here, right now in front of him.

Gerard had reached the open shed door and was shouting something but Patrick couldn’t hear him over the wind and the rain. “He’s calling for Andy,” Mikey muttered, watching his brother through the passenger window, “What’s taking them so long?”  
“No idea,” Patrick mumbled, wiping rain from his face with shaking hands and fighting to swallow the fear and grief howling inside his mind like a hurricane. His stomach hurt, blood burned hot and cold under his skin and an invisible weight like an anvil was pressing on his chest and getting heavier by the minute. Joe was dead and Pete was dying and now Andy might be gone too and that would leave him all alone in this dark world of monsters and demons and he couldn‘t survive that. He couldn't be brave without his friends. “Please don‘t die,” he begged in a choked whisper, “Please, please, please…” Reaching over the back of the seat to the stack of weapons in the vehicle's rear he grabbed a sharp steel knife and without even thinking about it slashed the blade across his left wrist, cutting deep and gasping at the flash of quick sharp pain, feeling almost relieved. Blood rose quickly from his sliced veins and spilled down his arm and, dropping the knife, he quickly leaned over Pete and held his bleeding wrist to the vampire’s mouth, letting the blood trickle between his lips. “Come on, Pete, drink,” he whispered, “Please don’t die. You can’t die here.”  
BANG!  
Jumping at the sudden noise, Patrick looked up and saw that the shed door was now shut and Gerard had disappeared. Looking frantically out of every window, he looked for incoming vampires in the mist but there weren't any. Surely it was just a matter of time. “We have to go,” he cried, trembling with more than just cold now, “They know we’re here, we have to go, Mikey!”  
“I know. Fuck!” Mikey swore, punching the steering wheel in frustration as he stared out at the place where his brother had vanished, “Dammit, Gee!” 

Looking back at Pete, Patrick saw with relief that the vampire seemed to be breathing now and even though his eyes were still closed, he was swallowing the fresh, warm blood running in his mouth. Gritting his teeth, Patrick pressed his wrist harder against Pete’s lips and forced him to drink deeper. Pete groaned and frowned in his sleep as his friend’s blood flowed steadily into his mouth and he was made to drink it down. 

Suddenly an ear-splitting explosion of thunder ripped through the heavens, so loud that the earth shook with the force of it, and a blaze of blinding fire erupted out of the ground less than ten feet from the car, sending chunks of mud and rock splattering over the windshield. Stunned, Mikey and Patrick stared in disbelief as something huge and monstrous and wreathed in red flames began to rise out of the ground in front of them. It looked like Hell itself had thrown open its gates to gobble them up and the two hunters froze in terror, unable to comprehend what they were seeing.

Then Pete sobbed in his sleep and drew Patrick’s attention away from the noise and fire. Weak with fear he felt the moist heat of his own blood still streaming down his arm and the sensation brought him back to his senses. Without waiting to see what demonic thing was emerging from the mud outside, he clambered past Mikey into the driver’s seat and turned on the engine, putting the SUV in reverse and stepping on the gas. The vehicle surged backwards through the puddles and Patrick swerved it wildly back onto the road and drove full-speed away from Grey’s Hill.

A dozen nightmarish visions about what might have happened to Andy and the others whirled through his mind, brimming with larders and blood and breaking bones and screaming, and he felt sick with guilt for leaving his friends behind but he knew that staying would only have put Pete, Mikey and himself in danger too. Forcing aside thoughts of carnage and pain, Patrick swallowed his boiling emotions and drove faster. He had to get them some place safe where they could find help, that was all that mattered. 

Speeding out of the meat-packing district with rain still hammering on the muddy windshield , Patrick didn’t see the headlights of the oncoming truck until it was almost too late. Stamping on the brakes as Mikey yelled and cursed, he swerved to avoid the other vehicle and the SUV went spinning through the mud and careened over the sidewalk out of control before slamming into a wall with a crash.


	8. Buried

One minute Brendon was talking to Andy and Ryan in the corridor and the next he found himself all alone inside a pitch-dark meat locker with no clue how he'd got there. The two humans were gone and he couldn’t remember why and it was so dark and so cold in here! His chest hurt with every breath he took. This place was just like what he'd seen and felt in his vision earlier in the car but now it was all too real and he was terrified. What the hell was going on? Trying not to panic, he stumbled around the small chamber, feeling along the icy walls with his hands until he found the door but there was no handle attached to it and no way to get it open. He was trapped!

Sinking to his knees on the chilled floor, the young vampire fought against the urge to cry as self-loathing shuddered through him. He couldn’t remember anything between this moment and talking to Andy and, groaning miserably, he forced himself to face the truth: Animus had taken over his mind and body and made him hurt his new friends and he couldn’t even remember doing it! It was all so unfair. The other hunters would never come back for him now because they'd think he'd hurt Andy and Ryan on purpose, and fuck what if he'd KILLED them?! He couldn't live his undead life knowing he'd killed the only people who had ever been kind to him since he was turned. He wasn’t a scary murderer, he was just a scared kid and he couldn't deal with this shit! 

Shivering numbly, Brendon hugged himself against the penetrating cold and his damp clothes crackled with frost. How long had he been in here? He didn't know. Chewing on his lower lip, he drew a little blood with his fangs and sucked it to comfort himself but it only worked for a minute or two until he remembered the vampire skeleton lying in one of the other meat lockers and then he began to cry. Tears fell and froze on his cheeks and he realized that he would now end up the same way as that starved and frozen corpse and no one would ever come to rescue him. He was all alone.

Weeping bitterly on the frozen floor, he was ready to give up when a low clang echoed through the meat locker, splitting the shadows, and he jumped up with sobs catching in his throat. Maybe someone had come back for him after all. Listening to the darkness he heard the screech of metal on metal and then a cool draught washed over him and the sound of the storm outside grew louder. Someone had opened the door.

Shrinking away from the draught, Brendon held his breath and braced himself for whoever or whatever was going to come in but nothing happened. No light came filtering through the open door and no footsteps. No voices. No vampires. No hunters. Nothing but the howling wind. There was no one there. The door had unlocked itself. Which could mean only one thing.

“No,” Brendon sobbed as his whole body went numb and the psychic summons of William Beckett took control of his every movement and thought. Forced to obey the call in his head, he felt his body walking quickly out the open door and into the storage shed corridor. His feet took a few steps to the left and then his body dropped to its knees and ran its hands over the floor until it found the edges of an old drainage grate and pulled it open. Moist, foul air billowed up from the watery sewer tunnels below and then Brendon felt himself falling. It was a long way down. 

***  
When Andy found his way back to consciousness, the first thing he felt was a dizzying wave of vertigo. The second thing he felt was a bolt of pain exploding in his nose and the back of his head and every muscle in his body aching like he had done ten rounds in a boxing ring. Squinting open his eyelids, he was rocked by another confusing surge of motion-sickness and bile flooded his mouth so he spit it out and watched the acid and saliva fall…past his eyes and up and away over his forehead. What?

Blinking hard, Andy forced his vision to focus and saw a long dark room with distant gray walls of dust-draped marble and a dozen boxes – no, not boxes, coffins - resting on huge carved shelves and the dirty stone floor: he was in a mausoleum. There were no open doors here and no windows of any kind and the shadows flickered in the murky glow above four candlesticks topped with thick white melting candles. The strangest thing of all about this place however was that everything was upside down. 

Waking up a little more, he finally realized that his arms were tied together with rope and dangling past his head into empty air beneath him while his legs were bound together somewhere above: he had been hung upside down from the ceiling. “Goddamn vampires,” he muttered.  
Turning his aching head to the left he saw Ryan hanging beside him apparently unconscious. The kid's eyes were closed and some of his brown hair was stiff with dried blood. His wrists were also tied together and when Andy looked towards the mausoleum ceiling he saw that both him and Ryan’s feet were bound in chains to huge iron hooks embedded in the dusty marble. This was bad. Though at least there didn’t seem to be any vampires around right now. The marble tomb looked deserted and the small door at the far end, flanked by broken statues, was closed tight.

“Ryan?” he whispered urgently, “Ryan, wake up. You have to wake up right now!” Ryan groaned softly but didn’t open his eyes. He probably had a concussion or something. “Shit,” Andy swore, looking around the large tomb with increasing panic. The last thing he could remember was Brendon’s fist in his face – ouch. He really hoped that the young vampire had been under the control of Animus or Beckett at the time or he would have to stake the little traitor himself if he ever got out of here.

The walls of this tomb were caked with soil and mildew and there was a large stone altar erected near the closed door, crumbling and old and carved with what looked like headless angels and dancing devils. The air was thin and musty and reeked of earth and decay and he doubted very much that there was any kind of ventilation system. Judging by the muffled, distant whisper of the storm still raging outside, Andy guessed that he was in fact underground, probably six feet under Grey‘s Hill cemetery. Beckett must have turned this old forgotten place into some kind of demented club-house for his followers where the sun would never find them.

Looking past his dangling hands Andy glimpsed a second altar, larger than the first, directly below him and Ryan and a needle of dread shivered up his spine. The altar’s stone surface was scratched deeply and stained an ominous rusty red and it didn't take him long to guess what was going on. “Oh come on, really?!” he muttered to himself in a quavering voice. Was Animus seriously going to kill him and Ryan by spilling their blood onto a demonic altar? It sounded like an episode of Buffy or something. Trembling with fear, he gazed hatefully at the blood-stained stone and realized that this place was probably the main source of the town’s dark energy. Hundreds of human captives had probably been dragged down here and slaughtered by Beckett over the years and what could be a more violent death than being slashed to pieces like a sacrificial calf? This place was bloodbath central and whatever power the local vampire Masters thrived on it originated here. 

Bringing his hands up level with his face, Andy stared helplessly at the rope on his wrists. It was thick and rough and the knots were tight - too tight for him to chew apart. Disappointed, he let his arms drop back into empty space and tried to ignore the blood rushing to his head and churning in his ears. He felt nauseous and dizzy and all around him the vault’s candles were flickering lower and lower. The stale air was probably pretty low on oxygen if they were buried under six feet of earth. “This just keeps getting better and better,” he sighed.

***  
TWO HOURS EARLIER...

Gerard kicked helplessly at the slippery shed floor as he was hauled backwards down the corridor. The person holding him was hugely strong and their skin was just as cold as the frozen shed walls: a vampire no doubt, and a big one too, at least twice Brendon‘s size.  
Blind and terrified in the dark, Gerard clawed at the thick fingers gripping his neck, fighting to breathe, until his assailant dropped him on the floor with a smack and kicked him viciously in the ribs so he couldn’t get back up. Gasping for breath as pain ripped through his torso, Gerard heard the screech of metal uopn metal and then a rush of damp air hit his skin and a pale shaft of neon light shone upwards out of the floor. 

The vampire grabbed him again, this time by the arms and dropped him like garbage through a large open hatch in the floor. Gerard felt himself weightless and falling and his surroundings blurred into a distant shimmer as the roar of rushing water filled his ears. He landed with a splash in a dark, flooded storm drain and plummeted through the surging water, hitting the bottom of the sewer tunnel floor hard enough to rattle his bones. Freezing liquid pressed down on his body, filling his mouth and nose and bubbling down his throat as he struggled to right himself and stand up until, dazed and hurting, he managed to force his head and shoulders above the rushing water.

Spitting and coughing, he blinked dirty droplets from his eyes and looked up into the gloom just in time to see a metal grate being dragged back into place over a hole in the shed floor far above him. “Fuck!” he bellowed angrily, “What is this bullshit?!”

The faint glow of a single neon lamp embedded in a dripping wire cage on one of the tunnel walls allowed Gerard to see the bleak concrete pool he’d been dumped into and it was not a pretty sight. Dirty flood water poured like a waterfall through a huge gaping hole to his left and three smaller tunnels opened up on his right with rivers of raging mud and flood running through them. There were no ledges he could climb onto to get out of the water and the only ladder had been sawn off the wall leaving only useless metal scraps behind. Beyond the dim light there was only blackness and shadows and the rumble of thunder. There was nobody else in sight. 

“Andy?” he called nervously, his voice echoing down the slimy concrete tunnels as icy water swirled around his shoulders, “Brendon? Ryan? Are you down here?”  
Nobody answered him and he hadn’t really expected them to. Wet shadows closed in around him like wolves and the cold water frothing around his body was quickly chilling him to the bone. Sighing miserably, he pulled his cell phone out of his jacket and held it up to check the signal but the soaking gadget was already dead. With a pang of regret, he let it float away and fumbled in his remaining pockets until he found a silver-bladed knife - the only weapon he had left. Holding the knife handle between his teeth he cautiously half-swam, half-waded into one of the smaller tunnels ahead. The freezing water was full of dead leaves and muck that stuck to his hands and face like slimy leeches and his muscles twitched and shuddered with chills in a very unhelpful way. There was an escape route out of this place, he just had to find it, but being underground is never a good idea in a vampire town. ‘This is all part of Beckett’s game,’ he thought bitterly, ‘Drop me down here like a rat in a maze and see how long it takes me to escape or drown.’

Moving cautiously into deeper darkness, he felt something squirmy and alive wriggle past his leg under the water and hoped to God it was just a rat. The water level was now at his neck and he was shivering so hard he could barely keep swimming as his brain screamed at his body to curl up into a ball and conserve whatever heat he had left. Narrowing his eyes, he bit down hard on the knife to stop his teeth chattering and tried not to think about what might have happened to Mikey and Patrick and the others. Whatever had made that huge explosion sound he’d heard up in the shed had probably devoured his brother whole but he couldn't allow himself to think like that. He had to concentrate on getting out of here and then he would find Mikey and all the others alive and everything would be fine. Everything would be okay...

A burst of noise behind him made his heart jump and he whirled around in the flood, peering frantically through the inky darkness at the circle of light where the tunnel he was in now met the waterfall with the neon lamp. The noise continued and he realized it was the dull screech of the metal hatch in the shed floor being opened again. Holding his breath he listened until the sound stopped and then silence reigned over the steady gush of water for a moment until someone else landed down here in the water with a splash.

Still gripping the knife with his jaw, Gerard swam back down the dark claustrophobic tunnel to where he had first landed and saw Brendon emerge from under the water. Sighing with relief, he took the silver blade out of his mouth and paddled over to the vampire. “Brendon, hey! Are you alright?”  
The vampire blinked a few times, his pale face blank as water ran into his eyes. He looked unhurt but also dazed and dead-eyed and not quite himself. “Brendon?” Gerard repeated nervously, “Where are Andy and Ryan?”

Brendon shook his head faintly, spraying water droplets from his black hair, and didn't speak. Something was very wrong here. With his stomach in knots, Gerard splashed away a little, his grip on the knife tightening and sure enough Brendon lunged at him, body-slamming him deep under the water. Seeing stars, the hunter didn't fight back at first and Brendon landed several punches on his face and body until he managed to shove the vampire away long enough to get his head back above water, gasping for breath. But the second he surfaced Brendon dove at him again with his fangs bared and without hesitation the hunter buried the silver knife in the vampire’s stomach. 

Horrified, he immediately yanked the blade free of Brendon’s skinny body, releasing a stream of blood into the water, but the vampire’s blank face didn’t register any pain. It was like his mind was on vacation. “I’m s-sorry man,” Gerard stammered, splashing away in retreat until his back hit a slippery wall, “I didn’t wanna hurt you, Brendon, but you made me! I don’t wanna fight.”  
With a low hiss the mindless vampire attacked him again, crushing the hunter hard against the wall and slamming a curled fist into his nose. Pain exploded in Gerard’s face and he lashed out defensively with the knife again, slashing the vampire’s chest and pushing him away. “Brendon, stop it!” he begged, blinking through tears of pain as blood and water ran from his nose, “What the hell is the matter with you? I thought you were on our side!”

Ignoring his wounds, Brendon said nothing and robotically attacked again so Gerard ducked into the water to avoid the blow and Brendon’s fist struck the concrete wall. With a fierce growl he plunged his bruised hand into the water and grabbed Gerard by the throat, dragging him back to the surface. Choking in the vampire‘s grip, the hunter desperately stabbed him again and again until he finally let go. Gasping for air, Gerard rubbed his sore neck as his heartbeat thundered in his ears and begged “Brendon, STOP!”, pointing the blood-stained knife at the vampire with trembling fingers, “Don’t do this to me. I need a friend down here and you’re the only one I’ve got so please ignore whoever’s telling you to attack me cos they‘re just in your head, okay? Don‘t listen to them!” 

Brendon stared blankly at the knife, swaying slightly as the water around them turned red. “Please,” Gerard whispered, searching the vampire’s hollow eyes for any trace of recognition, “Brendon, come on, Beckett or Animus are the ones making you hurt me, right? It’s not real. You can fight them!”

A long moment passed where all Gerard could hear was the flood and his own ragged breathing and for an instant he thought he saw a flicker of fear and sorrow in the vampire’s child-like face. Then like a passing shadow it was gone and Brendon tensed for a final attack, ready to smash his friend’s skull into the concrete. Cursing, Gerard ducked sharply to the right and slashed Brendon’s side with the silver knife, cutting him through to the muscle. The vampire staggered sideways as fresh blood coloured the water crimson and the hunter quickly dove behind him, seized a fistful of his black hair and slammed his head hard against the slippery wall. There was a sickening ‘crack’ and Brendon’s body went limp in the foaming flood.

Panting and shaking with adrenaline and cold, Gerard watched Brendon sinking unconscious below the surface of the water and felt a pang of regret for what he'd just had to do. As a vampire Brendon didn’t need to breathe and therefore couldn’t drown, but Gerard didn’t want to just leave him there. Unfortunately he didn’t have much of a choice. Wiping his bloody nose with hands that were turning blue with cold, he turned away and swam into the darkness.

***  
Brendon’s body sank slowly and landed softly on the slimy concrete under the waterfall where he lay for a long time, unfeeling, unknowing and dead to the world until the frosty hiss of Beckett’s thrall moved his body again like a puppet with invisible strings...

When the psychic commands finally faded away and Brendon’s own mind and feelings were restored to him, he found himself standing inside an old burial vault lit by dying candles and covered in dust. There were two demonic altars in front of him and strung up in chains over the largest one were Andy and Ryan.  
“Brendon,” Andy gasped, “Are you okay? Are you, like, y’know, yourself?”

***  
Trapped deep underground in the mausoleum, Andy hung in helpless silence trembling with dread as his head and stomach ached with anxiety and his legs went numb from lack of circulation. The candle flames faded a little bit more every few minutes and he felt like a couple of watermelons were sitting on his lungs. Several times he attempted to rouse Ryan without success and after a while he gave up because perhaps it would be better if Ryan never woke up again since if he did he would only die gasping in lifeless air. 

The last few days had been one epic disaster after another and Andy hoped and prayed to anything or anyone who might hear him that at least some of his friends had escaped Animus’s clutches tonight and were somewhere far away and safe. He found it hard to believe that the universe would let all of them die tonight, especially hurt, alone and afraid. Blinking through a haze of blurred vision and tears, he glanced at Ryan again and listened to his slow rasping breaths, regretting allowing the kid to hang out with them. Ryan wasn’t even a proper hunter. He never should have ended up here.

Just when Andy had given up hope, the marble entrance at the far end of the tomb creaked open and Brendon was shoved inside before the door slammed shut again. Andy didn’t want to know what kind of creature was standing guard out there. “Brendon,” he gasped, “Are you ok? Are you like, y‘know…yourself?” The vampire looked like hell, shivering and soaking wet, and his clothes were drenched in scarlet blood. Gazing in dazed confusion at Andy, he stumbled forward a few steps, his wet boots leaving bloody footprints, then groaned in pain and fell to his hands and knees, almost face-planting on the dirty marble. “What happened to you?” Andy asked in horror, “Do you know where we are?” 

Shaking his head faintly, Brendon grimaced as fresh blood oozed through his clothes and dripped into the dust like splatters of red paint on a marble canvas. “I was summoned here,” he croaked, “I didn‘t have control and I don‘t know what h-happened before... We’re in the eye of the storm, Andy. You f-feel it too, right? I saw this…in my head I saw it...”

Mumbling under his breath, Brendon crawled his way painfully across the mausoleum, leaving a trail of smeared blood behind him. “You’ve been stabbed with silver so you can't heal,” Andy realized in sympathy, “Who did this to you?”  
Shrugging, Brendon clambered up onto the altar below the prisoners and took hold of Andy's bound wrists. “Who cares. Did I hurt you and Ryan?” he asked anxiously, his large eyes shining with pain and guilt.  
“Yeah. Don’t you remember?”  
“No and I was so scared I’d killed you. I wasn‘t in control of my actions, Beckett and Animus were doing it all through me, you know that right? I never wanted to hurt you guys, I swear!”  
“It's alright, I believe you,” Andy said soothingly.  
“It’s not alright,” Brendon cried, appalled, “You’re not alright!” Scraping his wet hair out of his eyes, he started to dig his bloodstained fingers into the knotted rope binding Andy's arms together, trying to loosen it. Andy watched him worriedly in the fading light and saw that his hands were shaking and his yellow-brown eyes were glassy and bloodshot. “Who stabbed you?” he asked with genuine concern, “Was it Beckett?”  
Shrugging again, Brendon coughed harshly and bloody saliva flecked his lips and chin.  
“Brendon, answer me! Who hurt you?”  
“I don’t know. I don’t remember. But I'm sure I deserved it,” the vampire said bitterly, nodding to himself as he pulled the rope apart, “I deserve bad things for staying with Beckett all these years, I get that now.”  
“No you don’t.”  
“Then why does bad shit keep happening to me, huh?”  
Andy didn‘t have an answer for that. “Have you seen Patrick or any of the others down here?” he asked, changing the subject.  
“Like I said, I don‘t remember anything. Sorry.” 

Frowning in frustration, Andy watched the dying candles flicker for a while. “Brendon?”  
“Yeah?”  
“When Joe burned you he was wrong. You didn't deserve to be tortured and he shouldn’t have done that to you, I'm sorry. He was acting out of frustration and fear and how you saw him then wasn‘t what he was really like. He was one of the kindest people I ever knew. He was my best friend a hundred times over...I loved him like a brother.”

Sniffing, Brendon wiped his nose on his filthy sleeve and untied the last knot, letting the rope fall onto the altar top. “It’s okay,” he said hoarsely, “I don't think badly of him.”  
Andy nodded slowly, his blue eyes stinging with fresh grief, and hoped again that Patrick and Pete were still in one piece and far away from here.

With a low groan of pain Brendon struggled to his feet and peered up at the chains and padlocks binding Andy’s ankles to the ceiling. “No, it’s no good,” he sighed, “There’s no way I can break those chains on my own. I’m sorry.”  
“Believe me, I’m sorry too,” Andy muttered.

***  
Another hour inched slowly past and the candles began to go out. Andy’s vision filled with shadows and sparks and pain throbbed behind his eyes. Gasping for breath, he simply couldn’t get enough oxygen and it was like all the air had been sucked out of the tomb. He was suffocating.  
Brendon lay down quietly on the altar below with his eyes closed, curled up like a faithful dog that wouldn’t leave its owner. The vampire was too weak for his body to heal itself and he stopped breathing so Andy and Ryan could have more air but the vault was obviously air-tight and it wouldn’t be long before the two humans were inhaling nothing but carbon dioxide and dust.  
‘So this is it?’ Andy thought drowsily as trains of old memories spun through his blurry head, ‘Animus isn’t even here to watch us die.’

Squinting through the cobwebs in his vision, he looked down at Brendon and felt nothing but pity for him. “Bren,” he panted, “You may as well breathe…it doesn’t matter now.”  
Opening his glazed eyes, Brendon took a small breath and smiled faintly. “It’s so quiet in here,” he whispered, “I like the quiet. Without fresh blood I’m gonna die here too…The true death. I won’t be alone anymore.”  
“Huh?” the hunter mumbled, slurring his speech as his oxygen-deprived brain began to shut down, “You know you could drink me or Ryan…and save yourself. Why…don’t you?”  
“I never wanted to drain people before,” Brendon whispered wearily, “Not gonna start now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((Hi lovely readers, thanks for sticking with the story so far. Next chapter will be up soon and it will have Pete and Patrick in it. Stay tuned! xo))


	9. Reunion

“Pssst! Patrick, hey... Yo, wake up…”

With great difficulty and a strong sense of deja vu, Patrick cracked open his eyelids in thin slits and found himself squinting at a blurry yellow glare. He was lying on his side on something soft with half his face pressed into a squashy, damp pillow and he didn't want to move. A sharp stinging sensation screamed for attention in his left wrist and a deep ache burned under his forehead but he also felt warm and dry and safe for the first time in forever. Reluctantly opening his tired eyes all the way, he saw a nicotine-stained wall and the cheap wood-veneer door of a motel room a few feet away.

“Hey Trick, you back with us buddy? You had me worried.” A surge of joy and relief rushed through Patrick as Pete appeared in his line of sight and knelt down beside the bed.  
“Pete…you‘re alive!”  
Pete smiled slightly, showing his fangs, and clapped Patrick on the shoulder with a black-gloved hand, “Not quite. That ship has sailed, my friend, but yeah I'm okay, thanks to you.”  
“Me?” Patrick echoed, lifting his headached head off the pillow. His memory was blurry but the sense of security that Pete’s presence always gave him was already lifting his spirits.  
“Mikey told me what you did, giving me your blood,” the vampire added in a low voice, “I really appreciate that, thanks man.” 

Patrick nodded mutely, remembering why his arm hurt so much and the warmth of tears stung his eyes as the more unpleasant memories from the last day began to resurface. He shook his head and blinked them away. He could cry about Joe and everything else later when the battle was done, if it ever was. Rolling onto his back, he rubbed his face with both hands and saw a thick bandage taped around his wrist. He was also wearing a baggy black sweater that he didn’t remember owning which smelled faintly of cigarettes. He didn't smoke. 

“What happened after I gave you my blood?” he frowned, trying to remember how they’d ended up here. ..wherever here was. He felt drunk and hung-over at the same time and a lingering sense of terror lurked at the back of his throat. Pete frowned and said nothing and Patrick was about to ask again when suddenly it all came rushing back to him in horrifying Technicolor. “Ohmigod, I crashed the car!” he gasped, his stomach churning,“Is Mikey okay?”  
“Mikey’s fine,” Pete said quickly, “You had airbags and the truck you almost hit belonged to some vampire chick. Mikey he staked her. No big deal.”  
“No big deal,” Patrick repeated nervously, only calming down a little before another jolt of panic hit him. “But what about that thing coming out of the ground? It was on fire or something and it was gonna kill us!” The bad memories were coming thick and fast now and he could hear tremors of anxiety in his voice as he tried to sit up.  
“No, lie back down, you banged your head in the crash. You should chill,” Pete ordered, gently pushing him back onto the pillow, “You and Mikey are fine and everyone else who made it here is alright too. A little beat up maybe but-”  
“What do you mean who made it here? Who didn’t make it?! Where are we?” Patrick asked fearfully, trying to get up again. “Calm down,” Pete said firmly, his yellow eyes darkening, “We’ve all been through a lot. You need to relax. I’ll get you some water.” 

The vampire rose and walked away and Patrick sat up slowly and swung his legs over the side of the bed, finally taking in his new surroundings. Three things were immediately clear to him. One: he was right about this being a motel room. Two: he and Pete were both dressed in warm black clothes he had never seen before. Three: they weren’t alone.

On another bed a few feet away Frank was lying fast asleep on top of the covers wearing winter clothes and muddy doc martens. There were hospital bandages covering his right hand and neck and he was snoring softly and looked like he’d be sleeping for days but Patrick was just glad to see him alive.

Across the room, sitting in a chair by the only window was another familiar face. “Ray?” Patrick spluttered in surprise, “Where did you come from?” Ray Toro was a friend of Gerard's from the hunters trails running across the North-eastern states and he nodded his curly head in greeting. “New Jersey,” he replied in a deadpan voice, “I had to come. Frankie woke up alone in hospital several hours ago and couldn’t get any of you on the phone so he called me and I drove down to help him out, which is just as well since he’d already discharged himself and was wandering the streets looking for you by the time I got here. He didn‘t know where you were so we drove over to your old base of operations and…uh...” Ray trailed off and his friendly brown eyes clouded over with sadness. He looked reluctant to go on. “And what?” Patrick asked tremulously.

Pete reappeared with a mug of water for Patrick and a glass of blood – pig - for himself and sat down heavily on Frank's bed. “They found Joe's body,” he said in a low voice as his pale face twitched with emotion, “He’d been shot dead by those vampire cops and the fucking bastards just left him there to rot in the rain.”  
“That might have been a small mercy,” Ray said gently, “When you consider what else they could have done to his body.”  
Pete growled and glared into his drink. “I’ll kill every fucking one of them for this. Every single one.”

“Anyway,” Ray continued, clearing his throat, “We were still there when Mikey rolled up in a truck he’d stolen with you and Pete unconscious in the back and when he told us about Animus and the cops we decided to get out of town and regroup. Gerard called my cell phone from a gas station about a mile away saying he’d just climbed out of the sewers so we picked him up. Now we’re in a motel a few miles down the highway. I'm sorry to say your friends Andy and Ryan are missing and Gerard says your new vampire buddy Brendon is under Animus’ control and could be a threat to all of us. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news here but there you go.”  
His story told, Ray shrugged apologetically and took a rag out of his pocket to polish the steel broad-sword resting across his knees. Patrick sipped some water and tried to fit all of this distressing information together in his tired brain while Pete glared moodily at the carpet. 

After a long silence someone knocked on the door and Ray checked the peep-hole before unlocking it to let in Mikey and Gerard. The two brothers were carrying what looked like the entire contents of a snack vending machine in their arms and Gerard was wearing a wool hat and coat over his hunting clothes. His pale face was dappled red and purple with fresh bruises and his lips looked slightly blue. Mikey nodded stiffly at Patrick and tossed him a bag of potato chips. “Eat up. Get your strength back.” 

Gerard walked over to Frank’s bed and deliberately dumped a handful of chocolate and candy on his friend‘s sleeping face. Frank awoke with a jerk and pulled a gun from under his pillow then he saw Gerard and relaxed. “Fuck you,” he said affectionately, smiling at the sight of junk food, “Awesome, I’m starving.”

Everyone ate in silence for a while and the retro clock on the wall ticked along towards midnight. 

Pete disappeared outside for a few minutes on his own and when he came back he cleared his throat for attention and took charge is his usual way. “Alright,” he began, “Now that Ray's here with more weapons we can really get this done. I guess none of you ever shared the same hatred I have for Beckett and his peons but now I think we can all agree it's high time that evil blood-sucking douchebag was put down forever. He and Animus are messing with our friends now and our fucking lives! It's like 2005 all over again and we can’t let it go on. I know you're all tired and Patrick I know you're missing Joe like crazy and I am too. But we have to take the fight back to Beckett and shove it in his face while we still can. You guys killed most of his crew already and he hasn’t had time to recruit more muscle so this could be our only chance. We can’t stop until Andy and Ryan are safe and Beckett and Animus are dust. I know we can win this fight, guys I know it. We can make Joe proud. Let's fucking finish this!” 

***  
In the dead air of the vault Brendon suddenly sat bolt upright, rigid with terror. “He’s here!” he whimpered, “He's here NOW!”  
Andy was barely conscious and squinted at the vampire in confusion until he felt an invisible force rip through his chest like a heart attack: a stab of paralyzing fear that cut deeper than any blade and it felt worse than Joe dying, worse than anything he’d ever experienced. 

The mausoleum door shook violently on its old hinges, cracking and buckling before snapping in two like hot glass in a furnace and a sea of crimson light flooded the vault, painting the gray walls red. The shivering air erupted with a gale of icy storm wind that howled into the vault and screamed like a banshee and clouds of grave-dirt covered everything in sight. Hell had come to pay them a visit. Smearing grit from his eyes with trembling hands, Andy gazed in awestruck horror at the vast demon now entering the room. 

The creature looked like the Grim Reaper itself and Andy could feel its hunger and madness and his own life dissolving in a way that scared him half to death. The monster was over seven feet tall and shrouded in a black hooded robe so dark that only its fiery hands could be seen, and they were huge clawed things with curled yellow nails and sour corpse skin that glowed and crackled wildly with mystical red fire.

The sight of this towering beast was already terrifying while its head was hidden by the hood of its robe but then the scarlet energy pulsing from its hands flared brighter and illuminated the most hellish, most revolting face that Andy had ever seen. It was the horror of the human “larder” times a hundred, a rotting satanic mask of cancerous Death that had come up to earth only to murder and destroy. Stretching red veins crawled inside the demon’s hollow eye sockets and it grinned with a rotting jaw of blood-stained shark teeth, unleashing a psychic battering ram of terror in its rawest form directly into Andy's heart.

Shaking with panic and a fear he couldn‘t even begin to control, Andy tried desperately to look away from that soul-chilling face of nightmares but somehow his eyes were pulled towards it and pinned there by a powerful hypnotic force. He wanted to die just so he could stop looking at the horror but he couldn‘t move his head or even blink. He was literally paralysed with terror and his whole body shivered as cold sweat drenched his skin and urine soaked through his jeans. He had faced a thousand vampires during his lifetime but this was worse than all of them combined and his mind simply couldn’t take it. He couldn’t look away, no matter how hard he tried, and he wept helpless childlike tears as Death’s face filled his eyes and poured like liquid pain into his mind and down his throat to freeze his breath and stop his heart. It was like being torn apart inside and he couldn’t shut his eyes to make it stop! MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!

Suddenly out of nowhere, Brendon’s blood-stained hand slapped Andy hard across the face and, flinching at the blow, his reflexes forced his eyes shut. As soon as they were closed, the grip of paralyzing terror the demon had over him was loosened and he stopped falling into the dark deep pit of his own fear. Trembling so hard he could barely think as his heart slammed against his ribs, Andy kept his eyes shut so tight it hurt and made himself count to ten in his head over and over again until he could calm himself down enough just to breathe again. Just breathe…just breathe… He felt like part of his soul had died and he’d lost five years of his life. 

He didn’t know how much time passed before he was able to think straight again but it could have been only a minute or so before he heard Ryan start to scream like he was being murdered. His tortured cries rang in Andy’s ears like sirens and Andy wanted to see what was happening, he really did, but fear of the demon had glued his eyes shut and he didn‘t dare open them again. Cold dusty air flooded the room with fresh oxygen through the open door and Ryan’s screams grew louder as the metallic smell of fresh blood filled Andy’s nostrils and every compassionate impulse in his body told him to open his eyes and try to help Ryan but he didn’t want to see Death again and he didn’t want to watch Ryan die.

Ultimately the kid’s cries lasted so long that every one was like a knife in Andy’s ears and at last he couldn’t take it anymore. Quivering with dread, he turned his head towards the noise and forced his eyes open. Ryan was still hanging next to him and the Death demon was still standing over by the door nowhere near them but Ryan’s pale face was contorted with pain and his nose was bleeding. Blood and tears dripped down his forehead and soaked into his hair as he wailed in agony and his wide brown eyes were open but unfocused and something told Andy the kid was still unconscious. The shrouded demon must be hurting him inside his mind somehow, in nightmares or hallucinations that were more real to him than life. This was like how Brendon had been terrorized in the car earlier and what had the teenage vampire said then? ‘Animus was hurting me in the dark.’ With a jolt of clarity Andy realised that the demon in the death-mask was Animus himself. ‘Animus is death!’ Brendon had tried to warn them.  
No shit! 

Looking on helplessly as Ryan writhed and twisted in pain at horrors only he could see, Andy was very aware that Animus loomed just outside his line of sight and he didn’t dare turn his head even a fraction for fear of catching another paralyzing glimpse at the vampire lord’s hellish face. Instead he miserably lowered his gaze to the altar and saw that Brendon had vanished leaving a pool of sticky blood behind. Meanwhile the wild draught blowing in from outside was shrieking itself up into a mad raging gale that tore the breath from Andy’s mouth and very abruptly Ryan fell silent. 

Quivering with dread, Andy forced himself to look up, his insides boiling and expected to see a gutted corpse hanging next to him, but Ryan was still alive and obviously awake now, staring in mindless terror at Animus. Under the smudges of blood and snot dappling his face, his white skin was turning green and his lips were mouthing ‘no’ over and over again as his frail body shook with fear and the vampire Master burned his heart right out.

Willing to die rather than let this torture continue, Andy finally found the courage to move more than his head and smacked Ryan as hard as he could across the face with one of his untied hands to distract him. Ryan yelped like a kicked puppy and shut his wide eyes against the vampire lord’s hypnosis. As soon as it had started the howling gale and crackling red fire in the tomb died down to a silent ruby glow and the mystical light pulsed slowly like a heartbeat in the gloom. 

Andy gently rubbed Ryan’s bony shoulder in a lame attempt to comfort him and glanced up without thinking towards Animus but the vampire lord had now lowered his hood so far over his dreaded face that it was hidden from view and the hunter wasn’t hypnotized and crippled with fear like before. Gulping shakily with relief Andy heaved a few grateful breaths of fresh air and watched warily as the demon lord stood like a statue near the door observing the prisoners from a veil of shadows. Ryan was sobbing quietly with his eyes shut but Andy was too scared to say anything else to comfort him while Animus was watching. The eerie silence was deafening.

“Good evening, humans!” William Beckett cried, appearing in a mystical flash of light in the center of the old room. Jumping at the vampire’s sudden appearance, Andy glared with a mixture of hate and anxiety at the monster who had turned Pete and Brendon into vampires against their will. Beckett was dressed in a snappy white suit and matching bowler hat which glowed creepily in the throbbing scarlet light and the whites of his eyes had turned completely black, making him look even more soulless than usual. Smiling snidely, he bared his large fangs and strode up to the sacrificial altar. “Ryan, look at me!” he barked, fixing his black gaze on the young human. 

Trembling with fear, Ryan opened his eyes and gagged at the sight of his former Master. “Ryan, you naughty boy, I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Beckett snarled, “Where have you been?” Stepping closer, the vampire grabbed Ryan’s throat and squeezed until he made a strangled choking sound. “I don’t like it when my pets run away from me. I don’t like it at all. Do I Brendon?”  
“No,” Brendon mumbled from the shadows next to the altar where he was sitting with his face in his blood-stained hands. “No indeed,” Beckett agreed menacingly, letting go of Ryan’s neck with a final squeeze. Ryan began to cough then stopped himself with a fearful gulp. “Oh don’t worry, you can make as much noise as you like down here,” Beckett smirked, “No one will be able to hear you. There’s nothing you can do to avoid your fate now and even if I didn’t need your blood tonight I’d still kill you for running off with Pete Wentz.” The vampire spat Pete’s name as if it tasted vile to him. 

“So listen up, bloodbags,” he continued, glaring at Ryan and Andy, “I’ve had a lot of fun tormenting you and your idiot friends today with cops and sewers and fancy explosions but the time for games is over now. Tonight is October 21st, the Vampire Day of Renewal, and I’m going to spill your blood here to replenish the dark energy of this altar and renew our Lord Animus’ power. Last year we killed some common factory workers and used their blood but this year I wanted to do something special for the great Lord so I brought him a Hunter,” Beckett looked at Andy when he said this, “And an Innocent,” he added, turning to Ryan. “One of my own pets no less.”

“What about Brendon?” Andy stammered hoarsely, surprised he could still speak through his fear. Beckett’s black eyes flashed. “Brendon is here firstly because he dared to defy my orders and ran away from me so I must punish him. Secondly, because I've already lost Pete and am about to lose Ryan too so I want at least one of my pets still with me. And thirdly because I need someone to do my dirty work for me. I’m certainly not going to ruin my suit by getting your blood all over it.”

Brendon let out a gasp of horror and crawled on his knees before his former Master, begging, “Please no! I don't wanna kill them! I-I can't!”  
“You think you have a choice?” Beckett growled, “You don‘t, you little moron!”  
“But…but I don't wanna hurt them,” Brendon pleaded desperately, his eyes filling with bloody tears, “Don’t make me! You can't make me!” The injured vampire struggled to his feet and stumbled away from the altar towards the door but it was obvious that Animus wasn’t going to let him leave. The Lord of Vampires raised his powerful claws and a blast of lightning leapt from his outstretched hands and struck Brendon's body, slamming him against one of the marble walls with bone-rattling force. Dazed and whimpering, the youngest vampire slumped to the ground, painted red with his own blood.  
“You don’t have a choice,” Beckett reminded him darkly, “You never did.”


	10. Field Of Fire

The hunters split into two groups for the drive back to town - Pete, Patrick and Mikey in the stolen truck, and Ray, Gerard and Frank in Ray’s black Plymouth. The epic two-day storm was finally easing up and the clouds even parted on occasion to reveal glimpses of a ghostly moon and distant stars.

When the truck crossed the city limits Pete felt a surge of chills run through his body and he frowned angrily at the wet road. Ever since becoming a vampire he'd felt this same sickly cold sensation whenever he entered this town and it was one more ugly reminder of exactly what he was and always would be, whether he killed Beckett or not: a vampire, a ghoul, an undead freak. 

***  
Ray parked the car in a dark side street a couple of blocks away from Grey’s Hill cemetery and waited for Mikey to pull the truck in alongside. All the streetlamps here had been broken by vampires months ago and the whole area was blacked out. Stepping out into the drizzling rain, Ray walked to the trunk of his car and opened it, smiling at the reassuring cache of weapons hidden inside: half a dozen shotguns and revolvers, several crossbows, a large collection of silver blades dipped in holy water, a pile of grenades, some stakes, axes, and Joe’s old electric-net gun which had been left on Ray’s backseat after their last hunt together. Not to mention a metal crate of army-grade C4 explosives.

“You ready?” Gerard asked, walking up beside him. “Yeah,” Ray answered, lifting a shotgun out of the trunk and loading it with silver cartridges, “But I’ll feel better when the fighting starts and I don’t have time to think about how crazy this plan is.”  
“It was mostly Pete’s idea,” Gerard admitted, taking out the net gun and shrugging the heavy piece of equipment onto his back before stocking up on wooden daggers, “And you know what he’s like.”  
“I do,” Ray smiled, packing grenades into his coat, “That’s why I’m going along with it.”

When everyone was geared up with all the weapons they could carry they gathered in the muddy road for a pre-battle huddle. “Okay,” Pete whispered, “Is everyone clear on what we‘re doing?”  
“You bet,” Frank answered instantly. “Very clear,” Patrick added.  
“Are there any fangers close by?” Gerard asked anxiously. Pete closed his eyes for a moment, sensing the lurking shadows, and then opened them with a sigh. “There’s some vamps working for Beckett between us and the shed,” he said, “I think they're hiding, lying in wait. They’re not on the move.”  
“What about the Big Kahunas?” Mikey asked, leaning against the grill of the truck.  
“Yeah I can sense them too. They're somewhere underground and there's a tunnel entrance in the graveyard. I can get us through it but…it‘s weird,” Pete said distractedly, “I know where Beckett and Animus are cos I can feel them in my head but they aren’t calling to me. They should be able to sense my presence by now so I don’t understand why they aren’t trying to enthral me or something.”  
“Small miracles,” Ray muttered. 

“The storm has died down too,” Patrick observed, watching the light mist of rain falling around them, “Which must mean Animus’ powers are weakening. If he can’t sustain the force of the storm anymore then it makes sense he can’t touch your mind either, Pete. I mean the whole point of him being here tonight is to renew his mojo at a dark energy spot, right?”  
Pete had brought everyone up to speed on the disturbing details of the yearly Vampire Renewal ritual which he had learned about from picking apart the psychic flood of information his broken mind had suffered while he was a captive in Beckett's meatlocker. “But why would Animus be dumb enough to let his power drain so low before recharging?” Ray asked.  
In the dimness, Patrick checked his watch and frowned. “October 21st is almost over. If this is a yearly thing, maybe Beckett and Animus are running late this year? That would explain why Animus’s power is dipping so low. Beckett’s probably is too, since Animus is his Master. They’re underground away from the storm so unless they’re trying to do a bunch of magic right now they probably haven’t even noticed how weak they really are.”  
“That makes this the perfect time for us to attack,” Pete remarked, looking up at Grey’s Hill through the dying rain, “Let‘s move.”

***  
The enemy descended when the hunters had almost reached the foot of Grey's Hill. A dozen burly vampires in punk clothing leapt from the damp shadows of the factory yard and charged at them with weapons raised.  
“Stay together,” Pete ordered, standing his ground as the wind whipped at his coat and hair.  
Ray nodded and raised the barrel of his shot-gun, “Bring it on.” 

Ray and Gerard fired their guns in unison, blowing apart one vampire’s skull and trapping another in an electrified net long enough for Mikey to slam a spike through its heart. Pete threw a wooden stake like a spear into the chest of a third vampire and Ray managed to blast two more fangers into chunks before another one jumped him from behind and knocked him down. 

Meanwhile, Frank and Patrick fought back to back against four vampires who had wrongly assumed that the smallest hunters would be the easiest to kill. Patrick shot one attacker in the heart with a crossbow and shot another through the eye so it fell to its knees screaming and Frank used an axe to slice clean through its neck. Another vampire shoved Frank into the mud a second later but was impaled on the hunter’s wooden sword when it leaned in for the kill and the fourth vampire came running through the ashes of its dead comrade just in time to get one of Patrick's wooden arrows in its gut. Frank kicked the wounded fanger in the knees before jumping up and cutting off its head. “Fuck you!” he yelled as the monster died.

The last three vampires decided to mob Pete together and he head-butted one in the face before punching the second into the dirt and throwing a wooden stake through the neck of the third. Dark blood spurted and the vampire howled in agony until Pete pulled the stake from its jugular and stuck it in its heart instead. The first vampire charged again, armed with a stake of its own, and Pete ducked, flipping the running creature over his back into the mud where Ray, having finished off his own foe, slammed a wooden sword through its chest. Gerard electrocuted Pete’s second attacker and staked it once it was down and then there was nothing left but a carpet of muddy ashes. 

“Is everyone okay?” Pete asked gruffly, wiping blood off his face as he scanned the shadows for danger. “Yeah we‘re good,” Gerard panted, patting Mikey on the back, “But I’m going to have to ditch the net-gun, it’s just too clumsy.”  
“I‘m fine, I think,” Patrick added, sounding surprised.  
“I’ll live,” Frank smiled, kicking at the puddles of ashy remains.

***  
There was a moment of smothering silence in the tomb as Animus lowered his lethal claws and hid them deep in the folds of his robe and then the only sound in the chamber was Brendon sobbing. Even the distant noise of the storm outside had completely faded away. 

Andy’s eyes fell closed and he had to force them back open, blinking through the fizzing haze of a headrush. He’d been upside-down for far too long and blood was humming in his ears and throbbing in his face while his legs tingled and prickled and he couldn’t even feel his chained feet anymore. He was getting more nauseous and dizzy by the minute and the stink of scorched blood coming from Brendon’s clothes wasn‘t helping. 

Smiling wickedly, Beckett leaned down and grabbed Brendon by the throat, hauling him upright with a show of effortless strength and pinning his trembling body against the wall. With a sly chuckle the Master vampire pulled a sharp dagger from his suit jacket and waved it tauntingly in front of Brendon’s face.  
“Please don‘t make me,” Brendon still begged in a broken whisper, “Kill me instead, just kill me!”  
“Shut up!” Beckett growled, “Time is short and you’re being pathetic.” Staring deep into Brendon’s frightened eyes, Beckett laid down some psychic thrall and the kid stopped crying and trembling and stared blankly ahead, hollow-eyed and hypnotised. 

“Oh no,” Andy groaned, “Not this shit again.”  
“Will it hurt a lot d'you think?” Ryan asked in a quivering whisper, his bloodshot eyes drowning in fear. “I don’t know,” Andy answered honestly, “Probably.”  
Ryan nodded stiffly and glanced down at the altar, clenching his trembling fists. “I’m sorry,” Andy whispered, his vision bubbling with crimson spots, “We never should have brought you with us tonight, I‘m so, so sorry...”

“Your friend is right, Ryan, the ritual will be quite painful,” Beckett smirked, still pinning Brendon to the wall, “We need to bleed you out slowly so the dark energy pool can be open for as long as possible. Two human sacrifices means that two vampires can absorb direct power from the pool tonight and Lord Animus and myself need to drink long and deep this year. Oh yes!” The soulless vampire giggled gleefully and Andy shuddered with fresh terror. He was still trying to count repeatedly up to ten in his head as a way of keeping calm but was so scared he kept forgetting the numbers. 

Then Animus spoke. The demon Lord’s voice was as deep as a stone well and as coarse as dry leaves and it poured shivers of ice water down Andy’s spine. “We must begin the ritual. My power is fading.”  
“I'm sorry, my Lord. I apologise for the delay,” Beckett grovelled, still staring into Brendon’s dull brown eyes, “But I’m having trouble sustaining control.”  
“I don't care!” Animus boomed angrily from the dark depths of his hood, “The ritual must begin NOW so if you can’t control the boy then bleed the prisoners yourself!”

“No, no, I can control him,” Beckett insisted, pressing the flashing steel blade and some discarded rope into Brendon’s slack hands and then stepping away with his black eyes still focused on his slave’s face. Brendon stood unmoving for a moment while small sparks of awareness brightened and dimmed over and over again in his eyes like the death of a dozen stars. Then Beckett cleared his throat and ordered, “Bind and bleed the prisoners, Brendon. Do it now.”

Nodding obediently, Brendon quickly walked over to Andy and Ryan, his enthralled body freed from the pain of his injuries. “Brendon, stop! Wait!” Andy cried, “You don’t want to hurt us, remember? You don't want to do this!” but Brendon was firmly under his old Master's control and he climbed quickly onto the altar and sliced open Andy’s shirt with the knife before seizing the hunter’s wrists in a death grip and binding them tightly together again with rope. “Brendon, stop!” Ryan begged tearfully, “Stop this please!”  
Ignoring his childhood friend‘s pleas, the vampire held Andy’s arms down and sliced the knife savagely across the hunter’s bare chest.  
“Oww fuck!” Andy swore, snatching his bound hands away and punching Brendon as hard as he could in the chest. The young vampire hit the floor hard and his eyes widened with awakening horror as Beckett’s control over him began to slip. “Oh no you don’t,” Beckett muttered, darting forwards and laying his hands on Brendon’s face until he relaxed into the same zombie-like state as before. “Now do as you’re told or I’ll cut you up too!”

A few minutes later Andy and Ryan were both bleeding from several long shallow cuts carved into their arms, chests and backs. Swallowing the pain, Andy glared with poisoned hatred at Beckett while Ryan sobbed miserably, his tears falling with the crimson rain dripping from his skin. With the messy task completed, Beckett dragged Brendon clear of the humans and shoved him aside, watching hungrily as the blood trickled steadily onto the dusty altar stone, glinting in the vault’s supernatural glow. Lord Animus nodded in satisfaction and moved much closer to the altar, his long robes whispering over the marble floor. 

Blood pooled steadily on stone and the supernatural glow in the vault began to pulse faster and faster as a deep, rumbling roar shook the floor like an earthquake. The altar trembled and groaned on its foundations as if the earth itself was breaking and then split down the middle with an almighty CRACK as a huge explosion shook the chamber and a gush of dazzling white light erupted from the broken stone. 

The light blinded Andy and Ryan as it swirled up like a tornado around their bodies and became a pool of liquid lightning, spinning and churning itself into a whirlpool of bright crackling energy. Everything was fire and noise and wind and in the eye of the whirlpool a vortex of depthless pure black darkness began to form: the dark energy pool itself. 

The black glimmering pool hungrily drank up the blood streaming down the altar and seeping from the humans' skin and started to radiate an evil power so intense that the very air in the mausoleum began to spit and crackle with sparks of hellfire. 

Like an oozing living oil-slick, the dark pool crept over Andy and Ryan‘s hanging bodies, coating their skin and pouring into their wounds until their screams were choked into silence and they shrank to two faint wet shadows in the dark centre of the roaring hurricane of light. A storm of white, red and black lightning raged through the marble chamber, strobing wild shadows on the trembling walls and cracked coffins and Beckett stood at the edge of the electric gale grinning hungrily as he waited for Animus to take the first drink of ultimate power. 

The vampire lord stalked over the trembling marble to the black eye of the storm and with a shudder of ecstasy plunged his clawed hands into the oily center. The result was instantaneous. Vivid purple tendrils of supernatural power exploded out of the dark energy pool and wrapped around Animus’s arms and body, enveloping him completely. With a roar of pleasure Animus allowed the dark energy to wash over him like a waterfall and he became a towering statue inside it, frozen in time as he consumed his fill and grew stronger than ever.

***  
Pete and the hunters were running through the ancient tunnels under Grey’s Hill when a massive tremor ripped through the ground and rocked the passages violently, raining rocks and dust down on their heads. Stumbling to a halt, everyone pressed themselves against the trembling walls and waited for the shaking to stop but it didn’t. “It must be the ritual,” Pete yelled over the rumbling noise, “It’s started!”  
“Are we too late?” Patrick cried, tripping on the bucking ground and almost falling on his face.  
“Not yet,” Pete answered grimly, shaking grit from his hair, “But Andy and Ryan will be dead soon if we don’t stop this thing so come on!” Flying off down the passage into the dark, Pete left the others with no choice but to follow him as the earthquake intensified and a wide tunnel of stone and bones opened up before them. Leaning on each other for balance, the hunters made it to the shattered doorway of a large burial vault beyond which a fiery storm of white and purple lightning raged. “This is it,” Pete warned, turning to look at his friends, “Whatever happens in there, stay together and keep each other alive. And whatever you do don’t look directly at Animus’s face. Got it?”  
“Yeah!” Patrick, Ray, Gerard, Frank and Mikey replied, their voices nearly drowned out by the noise of the mystical whirlwind in front of them as they all drew their weapons. “Good,” Pete nodded, turning back to the broken door with fire in his eyes, “Then it’s time for this to end.”


	11. Doomed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \------------------(this chapter is a bit shorter than the others, sorry. will update again soon! xx)-----------------------

Animus stood motionless in the black eye of the storm around the altar, oblivious to his surroundings, while Beckett watched with increasing hunger and envy, trembling with anticipation and the effort of keeping Brendon enthralled as his powers rapidly faded. He badly needed to renew his magic now and he wished Animus would hurry up and finish so he could have a turn.

He was still waiting when a cold itch in the back of his head told him trouble was near and with a muttered “Fuck,” he spun around in time to see Pete leap through the broken doorway with a wooden sword in each hand and a pissed-off expression on his face.  
“Aw shit!” Beckett breathed. What had happened to the dozen guards he’d left outside? Surely Pete hadn’t slain them all alone! 

Then five human vampire-hunters dressed in black also ran into the vault and Beckett remembered with annoyance that Pete was never alone. Scowling at the newcomers, he recognised the short one with reddish-blond hair called Patrick but the others were unfamiliar. They must be from out of town. Dammit! He should have seen this coming. For a moment the hunters stopped and stared in amazement at the light show going on in the tomb and then Patrick and a tall curly-haired man aimed handguns in Beckett‘s direction and the vampire swiftly raised his hands and used his dwindling powers to melt the barrels of the weapons, making them useless. The hunters dropped the crippled guns in annoyance and drew two more from their coats but hesitated as Pete barked some orders at them. Beckett couldn’t hear most of it over the roar of the dark energy but he did hear one thing: “Leave Beckett to me!”

Together the five humans moved towards Lord Animus and the energy-swamped altar and Beckett tensed with fright. If these meddling idiots destroyed the ritual now he would be powerless for an entire year! “No fucking way,” he snarled, gritting his fangs and unleashing an exhausting torrent of crimson lightning from his hands. The blast missed most of the hunters but surged towards a young one with a bandaged neck and a skinny one who at the last second was pushed to safety by a third hunter who took the impact of the blast himself. The two humans were thrown hard into a marble wall and slumped unconscious to the floor with tendrils of scarlet spitting and biting over their flesh. 

Beckett allowed himself a smug grin of triumph before realising that his hold on Brendon had been broken by that last outburst of power and Pete was now charging at him with swords drawn.

***  
Mikey scrambled up with his heart racing from where Gerard had pushed him and turned to see his brother lying motionless on the ground with Frank. They looked unconscious or dead and their clothes and faces were streaked with scorch marks from the mystical red electricity sparking over their bodies. “Gee!” Mikey gasped, darting towards his brother but Ray grabbed his arm and yanked him back. “Don’t be stupid, Mikey! You could get electrocuted if you touch them now.”

“Guys, come on!” Patrick cried, watching Pete tackle Beckett with worried eyes, “We have to get Andy and Ryan outta here.” Nodding grimly, Ray released Mikey, who immediately knelt down by his fallen brother, and slipped on some sunglasses to see better in the white glare of the whirlwind blazing around the hovering mass of dark energy. “That's Animus, I take it?” he guessed, pointing at a huge cloaked monster standing near the centre of it all.  
“The one and only,” Brendon panted, appearing beside them.  
“Gah, Brendon, don‘t sneak up on people!” Patrick snapped nervously.  
“Sorry,” Brendon sighed, rubbing his red eyes with a blood-stained hand.  
“Where’s Andy and Ryan?” Ray asked.  
“In there…somewhere,” Brendon said wearily, pointing into the black heart of the vortex, “The dark energy is draining their blood. They’re dying.”  
“And how do we get them out?” Ray demanded, pulling a fresh gun from a holster on his thigh. “They’re chained to the ceiling,” Brendon explained, sitting down tiredly on an old coffin, “So shoot them down I guess? Stay clear of Animus though. When the blood stops flowing and the dark energy f-fades he’ll wake up and do NOT look at his face. Don’t cut yourselves in there either or it'll feed on you too…” Trailing off into a coughing fit, the wounded vampire grimaced in pain and licked blood from his lips. “Sorry I can’t help you,” he wheezed with a bitter smile, “Little busy dying here.”

***  
The first thing Pete saw when he bust into the burial vault was the cause of all his hatred and pain in a bright white suit: William Beckett. The evil vampire’s black eyes went wide at the sight of Pete arriving in the secret heart of his lair and the expression on his face was priceless but Pete didn't have time to savor it. Clenching a wooden sword in each fist, he raised both blades ready to plunge them into Beckett’s chest. Then Beckett shot a blast of scarlet fire at Patrick and Ray, melting the guns in their hands and Pete whirled to face his crew with one sword still aimed at Beckett: “Find Andy and Ryan and get them out. Leave Beckett to me!”

Snarling with fury, Pete charged the vampire master while Beckett conjoured a bolt of lethal lightning and fired it at the hunters, and stabbed a sword deep into the monster’s chest. Unfortunately he missed Beckett’s heart and, still skewered on the blade, Beckett screamed in outrage and seized Pete’s left arm, burning him with a bolt of electricity that ripped through Pete’s hand and made him drop the other sword. Hissing with pain, Pete jerked his arm away and Beckett scooped up the fallen blade and slammed it against his opponent’s head. A crack sounded in Pete’s ears and the whirling lights of the ritual in the vault dimmed as his vision disintegrated and agony shook his skull. Staggering sideways, he managed to grab the sword still piercing Beckett’s ribs and yank it free, using it to block the other blade as Beckett swung it around for a second blow. 

Blinking hard through his blurred vision, Pete punched Beckett in the jaw and jabbed the handle of his sword into the older vampire's nose, smashing it to ruins. Roaring like a wild animal, Beckett bared his fangs and spat blood in Pete’s eyes screaming “You won’t take this night away from me you fucking maggot! This ritual is MINE!”  
“Not anymore,” Pete snarled, blocking his former master’s sword as Beckett thrust the weapon at him again and again, aiming for his heart. With his head ringing in pain and the dark energy vortex howling like the devil behind them, Pete shook off the worst of the blows and dropped to his knees, slipping his sword behind Beckett’s legs and tripping him. Beckett landed heavily on his back and viciously hacked his sword into Pete’s thigh, cutting him to the bone. Screaming in pain, Pete threw himself on top of Beckett and let his anger and hatred take over at last, punching and tearing at the evil monster who had created him as hard as he could.

Squinting through a sticky mask of his own blood, Beckett looked beyond Pete’s flying fists and glimpsed Patrick and Curly Haired Guy standing near the altar at the edge of the dark energy pool. They were about to ruin everything! Cursing, Beckett summoned up his last dregs of strength and drew up his legs to kick Pete in the stomach with all his might, sending him sliding over the dirty floor. With a bone-rattling thud Pete tumbled headfirst through the dark energy pool into the hard altar stone and lay still, blood trickling from his ears and nose as flashes of sour light flickered over his dead skin. 

With a smirk of triumph Beckett staggered to his feet, his white suit stained red, and made for the altar. Patrick saw him approach and aimed his gun but the young hunter was too slow to pull the trigger and Beckett tore the weapon from his clammy hands and kicked him onto a rotten casket before turning and aiming the weapon at Curly Haired’s face.  
Curly Haired instantly raised his own weapon and they were both about to fire when an axe blade came out of nowhere and severed Beckett's hand and the gun it held! With a piercing scream, Beckett collapsed to the ground clutching the bloodied stump of his wrist and the hunters surrounded him in the flashing shadow play of light and darkness with their weapons aimed. Defeated, Beckett looked desperately towards the altar one last time and to his absolute horror saw the pool of dark energy flowing down around Pete’s unconscious body and wrapping him up in its purple light, pouring energy into the wound in his leg and giving him all its remaining power.  
“NO!” Beckett screamed, insane with rage, “It was supposed to be me!” Then someone swung the axe again and all he knew was darkness. 

***  
“Thanks Mikey,” Ray said, standing over Beckett’s crumpled body, “But why d’you only knock him out? You could have killed him.”  
“Pete said we should leave Beckett for him,” Mikey shrugged, dropping the axe as the rising wind tried to shake the tomb apart.  
“Where is Pete?” Patrick asked fearfully, splinters of wood and ancient bones showering from his clothes as he scrambled to his feet. “I can't see him!”  
“Beckett kicked him into the weird black jizz in the eye of the storm,” Mikey replied.  
“And that’s where we’re going,” Ray added, prising Patrick’s gun from the cold fingers of Beckett’s severed hand and giving it back to him, “Time’s running out.”

The three hunters moved level with Animus’s motionless form and stood in the windy crackling vortex surrounding the huge sphere of shimmering blackness that pulsated like a thunderous heart. Inside its inky depths they could just about see the murky outlines of Animus’s clawed hands and beyond them the shell of a broken altar and the bodies of Pete, Andy and Ryan.  
“Sonofabitch,” Mikey gasped, flinching as the howling air spat sparks, “What the hell is this thing?”  
Shaking his head, Ray peered up through the flashing light and living darkness and spotted the metal rings holding Andy and Ryan’s chained feet to the ceiling. “There!” he cried, aiming his revolver at where the rings joined the cracked vault ceiling high above them. With trembling hands, Patrick did the same and they both stepped cautiously into the black oily sphere.

Dark energy pulsed over their skin, stinging like hot water, but since they weren’t bleeding or vampires it did nothing to them. Squinting in the sudden darkness, Ray and Patrick fired their guns at the ceiling until the marble around both hooks cracked and crumbled. Holstering his weapon, Ray grabbed hold of Andy’s body - his large hands slipping in Andy’s blood - and pulled him down, breaking the chains out of the broken ceiling while Mikey did the same with Ryan and both the unconscious prisoners fell heavily into their arms. 

Meanwhile Patrick crouched down nervously where Pete lay motionless at the foot of the altar and stared in panic at the purplish-black energy swamping the vampire’s body and glowing under his skin. Biting his lip in anxiety, he grabbed one of Pete’s wrists and yelped with pain as an electric shock pierced his arm. Jerking his hand away with tears in his eyes, he found his fingers had been burned red and black, “Oww! What the hell?!”

“Leave him, Patrick,” Ray ordered, struggling under Andy’s dead weight, “Pete’s orders were to get these two out of here no matter what and Animus could wake up at any second.”  
“Are you kidding? We can’t leave Pete behind!”  
“From the look of your hand I'd say we have to.”  
“I can’t!”  
“You have to! So move!”  
Grabbing Patrick by the collar, Ray dragged the smaller man away from Pete’s body and helped Mikey carry Andy and Ryan out of the dark energy away from the altar and over to the old doorway where they lay them down on the muddy tunnel floor with Gerard and Frank.  
“Are they still alive?” Mikey panted, kneeling beside Ryan and Andy’s bloodied bodies. Ray held his hand over Ryan’s mouth and frowned, “Still breathing. Barely.”  
“They need an ambulance,” Patrick fretted, cradling his burned hand against his chest, “And we have to take Pete with us, Ray, please! I can’t lose another friend tonight, n-not after Joe. We have to save him!”  
“How?” Mikey snapped, “What do you suggest we do, Patrick? My brother and best friend are also unconscious in case you haven‘t noticed and if they don’t wake up then how are we supposed to carry them out of here as well as Andy and Ryan, let alone Pete? Animus will snap out of his trance any minute now and kill us all if we stay here. We’re all gonna fucking die!”  
“No we’re not,” Ray said firmly, “We’ll get out, I promise. Where’s Brendon?”  
“Here,” the vampire answered wearily, crawling over to join them.  
“Can you walk?” Ray asked sharply. Brendon nodded slowly, blood and sweat dripping from his hair, “I think so.”  
“Good.”

“You’re not listening to me!” Patrick insisted, almost in tears now, “What about Pete? He’s stuck in that…that dark energy thing and it’s probably killing him! We can’t leave him here!”  
“The dark energy took Pete?” Brendon asked eagerly.  
“Yes!” Patrick cried, “And we have to do something!”  
“Wow,” the injured vampire muttered, “I wonder if-”

Before Brendon could finish, a final blast of icy air whipped through the vault and the temperature plummeted as the supernatural light blasting the walls dimmed and Lord Animus suddenly threw back his hood and turned towards the hunters. “Don’t look at him!” Brendon warned and Ray and Mikey shut their eyes in time but Patrick was too strung out with panic and pain to listen and his wide blue eyes met Animus’s hellish face. 

Silence fell as the wind dropped away like a stone and Patrick was paralysed. He couldn't move, breathe or even blink as a crushing wave of terror hit him like a truck and filled his chest with ice water. His mind flooded with images of death and torment and pain and all he could feel was a gut-wrenching mind-numbing fear as his heart shattered and sobs choked his throat and the whole world started screaming and screaming and wouldn’t stop!

With an almighty BOOM the ball of dark energy imploded and the vault flooded with a final burst of light so blinding that everyone and everything vanished into it like flesh disintegrating in a nuclear blast. The spell of terror cast on Patrick broke as his vision dissolved in the glare but he was crushed and wrecked in a million helpless pieces, sweating and shaking and crying so hard his whole body ached. A strong hand suddenly covered his eyes and he flinched and cried out but it was a warm human hand, not a demon’s claw, and he was gently turned away from Animus as the marble floor quivered under his knees. The hand fell away and the blinding light had already faded. Through breathless tears and the dazzling after-burn in his retinas he saw Ray and Mikey and Brendon and realised he was still alive.


	12. Bare Bones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \--------------------(sorry it's taken so long to update this time! x)---------------------

When the dust settled every trace of the supernatural whirlwind and the dark energy pool were gone and Pete and Animus were standing up on opposite sides of the masuoleum facing each other in silence across the shattered floor. The two vampires looked fully alert - although with Animus’s face once again hidden by his hood it was hard to tell - and their hands were ablaze with vibrant purple fireballs of powerful dark magic. In this eerie light the whites of Pete’s eyes were completely black like two deep holes in his face. Neither vampire moved a muscle and the tension in the air was thick enough to make skin crawl.

“Ohmigod,” Patrick panted, sweat soaking his short hair as he screwed his eyes shut, struggling to battle the psychic nightmares Animus had placed in his mind, “We’re all gonna die here…we’re all gonna die!”  
“Shhhhhh,” Ray murmured, “We’re not going to die, I’ll think of something. Calm down Patrick, it‘s gonna be okay.”  
“No it’s not,” Mikey whispered, eyeing Patrick with concern as the youngest hunter began to hyperventilate, his dirty face turning whiter than paper, “He is clearly not okay!”

On the tunnel floor, Gerard suddenly coughed and groaned as he regained consciousness and Mikey clapped a hand over his mouth to shut him up. “Whuh th‘ fuh?” Gerard mumbled woozily, sitting up and shoving his little brother’s hand away. Mikey put a finger to his lips and pointed through the open door at Pete and Animus and after a few seconds, Gerard’s hazel eyes widened in understanding and he reached clumsily for the spare gun in his jacket. “What the fuck happened while I was out?” he hissed.  
“Some weird shit,” Ray muttered, raising his eyebrows as if he couldn't quite believe any of it himself.

Looking away from the statue-like forms of Animus and Pete, Gerard saw that Andy, Ryan and Frank were out cold, Brendon was slumped weak and bloody against the tunnel wall and Patrick was a quivering wreck. The odds weren’t looking good.  
“I can't do this…” Patrick whimpered, staring at his burnt hand which was also slick with Andy’s blood, “Ohgod!”  
Frowning at Frank, Gerard poked his friend hard in the stomach and Frank grunted and opened his eyes a little before they slipped closed again, blood running from his nose.  
“Frank, wake up,” Gerard whispered sharply, poking him again.  
“Nuh,” Frank mumbled.  
“Wake up, that’s an order!”  
Shaking his head, Frank dragged his heavy eyes open and propped himself up on his elbows, wincing with pain, “I'm awake, I'm awake. Jeez, what a headache.”

Turning to the others, Gerard tried to ignore the pain in his own head and forced himself to think, “Ray, you should take everyone back out to the cars and then bring your C4 stash down here pronto.”  
“Hell yeah,” Ray nodded gleefully, imagining the glorious explosion, “Let’s put this place out of business for good.”  
Gerard smiled wearily, “Yeah. Mikey, Brendon, Frank, you can help Ray carry Andy and Ryan and when you get above ground take the truck and get to the hospital ASAP. I’ll stay here and keep an eye on things till Ray gets back. What's wrong with Patrick?”  
“Animus got in his head,” Ray explained sadly, “After everything else he’s been through lately, I think it kinda broke him.”  
“I don‘t want to leave you down here alone, Gee,” Mikey protested quietly, “It’s too risky.”  
“Well someone has to stay and keep an eye on those two,” Gerard whispered, glancing warily at Animus and Pete, “And you’ve got to help the others with Andy and Ryan.”  
“But_”  
“Mikey, do me a favor and just go, please!”

Rolling his eyes, Mikey stood up and helped Frank to his feet and the two of them hefted Andy’s unconscious body between them. With a cautious hand, Ray shook Patrick’s shoulder and tried to get him to move but the traumatised hunter wouldn’t budge from where he sat shivering against the tunnel wall. When Ray touched him he twisted fearfully away and pressed his hands over his ears, panting for breath as silent tears ran down his face. Shrugging helplessly at Gerard, Ray gave up and lifted Ryan’s scrawny body off the floor and over his right shoulder, firefighter-style, before grabbing Brendon by the arm and heading off into the black tunnels towards safety. 

Gerard breathed a sigh of relief as his friends left the battlefield but the war wasn’t quite over yet. Peering across the tomb he shuddered at the sight of the motionless vampires staring each other down across a carpet of broken coffins, blood and bones and wondered why they hadn’t attacked each other yet if that's what they were going to do. A new storm was brewing and the air crackled with power and hissed with the rising darkness of evil and he had no idea what would happen when Animus or Pete finally made the first move. Something close to Armageddon looked quite likely. 

Gritting his teeth, Gerard held his revolver tightly with clammy fingers and shuffled closer to Patrick who was still trembling with his eyes shut, having some kind of mental collapse. Biting his lip the older man reached out a hesitant hand to tap his companion's shoulder and in the shadowy stillness he could hear Patrick’s shallow, desperate breathing and see the tears and beads of sweat on his pale skin. His closed eyes were ringed with dark circles and his shaking hands were stained with blood and soot. He looked much younger than his 29 years, more like a helpless child, and Gerard couldn’t bear to see him like this. “Patrick, hey, can you hear me? You need to take a deep breath, buddy, ok? Just a few deep breaths. Trust me, you'll feel better. Animus isn’t in your head anymore, man. Whatever he made you see, it isn’t real. We’re still alive and I won’t let him hurt you again. I won't let him get to you, I promise.”  
No response.  
“Patrick, listen, if you can stand up you can get out of here. All you have to do is get up and walk, can you do that for me?”

Patrick opened his eyes wide and they were bloodshot from crying and adrenaline. “No,” he stammered between wet heaving breaths, “Can’t just… H-He…” Lurching forwards, he suddenly vomited a puddle of watery puke on the tunnel's dirt floor, shivering like someone with a fever before slumping back against the wall with his head in his hands.  
“Hey now, stay with me Patrick,” Gerard said worriedly, “Please, you have to get up and follow the others. You need to get out of here!”  
Patrick shook his head and groaned like a dying animal through his burnt fingers, his sweaty hair falling in a wet curtain over his forehead. 

Sick with helplessness, Gerard looked anxiously between Animus and Pete. Both the mausoleum and the tunnel were now warming up like an oven and the heated air hummed and sparked with mystical energy only this time not from the altar but from the vampires themselves. Pete’s glowing hands had clenched into white-knuckled fists and Animus was moving his gnarled claws in strange shapes and circles, scratching vivid blue wounds in the scorching air. Time was almost up.

Slumping in defeat, Gerard sank back against the wall next to Patrick still holding his gun full of useless lead bullets that couldn’t kill vampires. He ached all over and his eyes were gritty with exhaustion. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept. Patrick was still gasping in strained, breathless sobs and his lips were turning blue. “Patrick, listen to me,” he begged in a whisper, “You’re not breathing right and you need to calm down and look at me, okay? Do you understand? I can help you, just breathe... Come on, deep breaths, slow, slow... If you pass out now I can’t drag your skinny butt through all those tunnels by myself so please, please, stop crying. You can stop, you can breathe. Come on, shhhh, just breathe... I can’t imagine how hard this is for you but you’re all I’ve got down here and you can‘t just…Patrick? Can you hear me!”

Patrick couldn‘t understand Gerard’s words anymore or see the bloodstained tomb in front of him. All he knew was the deep draining sting of despair and anxiety and all he could see in his head was an endless parade of flashbacks of terror and gore: dungeons and fighting, fangs and fires, hospitals, torture, bullets, cops, death, storms, corpses, crashed cars, Animus, blood! Somewhere at the edge of his consciousness he knew he was still crying as the gasping sobs poured out of him like a river, but he couldn’t stop the tears long enough to clear his mind or take a proper breath. His chest burned and his head ached and he felt like he was losing himself in the darkness. Since Joe's death he had been fighting a losing battle against the stress and grief building up inside him and those feelings had been a constant pressure on his heart, lungs and head, crushing him and throwing him towards the edge. Now he had lost the fight and his traumatised mind was desperately shutting down to try and save him from further harm but it was too late. His best friends were all either dead or dying. It was too late for everything!  
*  
***  
Gerard had never seen anyone so messed up before and he had no idea how to fix Patrick so he did the only thing he could think of: he pulled the hysterical kid’s hands away from his face and slapped him as hard as he could.

The force of the blow knocked Patrick sprawling across the grimy floor and he instantly rolled over and blinked up at Gerard in surprise, any remaining sobs dying in his throat and dissolving into slow ragged pants as he finally began to breathe a little deeper. Gerard shrugged apologetically and helped him sit up, putting a reassuring arm around his shoulders. “I‘m sorry, man, I didn‘t know what else to do. You feel any better?” Wheezing hoarsely, Patrick clenched his shaking hands together and nodded, looking up and flinching at the sight of Pete standing across the trembling tomb with black eyes and burning hands. “What’s h-happening?” he stammered, wiping away the tears on his face with his filthy sleeve, “What’s Pete doing?” 

“I have no idea,” Gerard admitted as the juiced-up bodies of Pete and Animus blazed more and more brightly with increasing power, “I think they’re locked into some kind of stand-off for now but Ray should be back here any minute with enough explosives to put this place out of action forever. You can either wait here with me or leave and catch up to the others. You look like a trip to hospital would do you good right now.”  
Patrick shook his head and swallowed hard, his soft blue eyes puffy and red, “I won’t leave Pete,” he said stubbornly, “He wouldn't leave me.” 

The mausoleum walls were starting to crack under the strain of unnatural power strobing out of the two vampires and the whole room and tunnel beyond once more began to vibrate with tremors. A few yards away a shrivelled corpse thrown from its broken coffin twitched manically on the trembling floor and Gerard watched it in revulsion; a jittering pile of gray rotting tissue and brittle bones. Despite the increasing danger, Patrick had apparently found some kind of peace in his head and his panicky breathing slowed enough for proper oxygen to reach his lungs. His blue lips turned pink again and his pale skin flushed around his cheekbones and turned red where Gerard had hit him. Dirt and crushed marble rained down on the two hunters like snow as the heat and tremors increased by the moment. There was still no sign of Ray. 

Without believing it would make any difference, Gerard carefully aimed his revolver at Animus’s shrouded body and squeezed the trigger. The gunshot rang out loudly over the rumbling earth but Animus didn’t even twitch. Zero reaction. Nothing. 

Lead bullets couldn’t kill vampires but they should at least hurt them a little and Animus hadn’t even flinched. Gerard checked his gun, making sure it was loaded and had actually fired. His shot had been accurate he was sure of it and at the very least Animus should have stumbled from the impact but… Then he spied the bullet he had fired lying on the floor at Animus’s feet, crushed and dented as if it had hit a wall of solid titanium and his heart sank. Animus was so chock full of dark power now that he had become immune to bullets. Well fuck. What if the explosives Ray was bringing had no effect at all?! 

Huddling closer to Patrick as the savage glow of power around Pete and Animus brightened evermore, Gerard considered dragging his companion out of there right now and leaving the vampires to it but at the same time he couldn’t stand the idea of retreating and he knew that Patrick wouldn't want to leave Pete behind. Loyalty was priceless in the hunting game and he could think of a dozen times when he would have died if Frank or Ray or someone else hadn’t risked their life to stay by his side. No matter how hopeless the situation seemed he knew he couldn’t leave Pete alone with the enemy to die. He would hate himself forever if he did. 

Then the largest loudest tremor so far shook a hail of soil down from the tunnel roof and Pete and Animus threw up their glowing hands in unison and unleashed dazzling fireballs at each other. The vault lit up like a nuclear explosion and Gerard didn’t have time to think anymore.


	13. Oblivion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \-----------------(This is the last chapter guys, hope you liked reading this story. Let me know what you think or if you want me to write a sequel sometime xx)------------------

The earthquake tremors had shaken Grey’s Hill to its core, unearthing coffins, splitting open tombs like rotting melons and causing several cave-ins in the underground tunnels. By the time Ray and his companions managed to break through this mess and emerge muddy and exhausted into the outside world, a fresh thunderstorm was thrashing in the black ocean-sky and fresh rain was flooding the streets ankle-deep. Animus’s power had returned with a vengeance.

Wading through the filthy water to their vehicles, the four hunters who could still stand loaded Andy and Ryan’s unconscious bodies into the truck and Frank tossed the keys to Mikey. “Here. You know the way to the hospital, right?”  
Mikey stared at the keys as raindrops ran over the cold metal. “I don’t think I should leave,” he said, “If Gerard stays then I should stay.”  
“We don’t have time for this,” Ray warned, hefting a case of C4 explosives off the back seat of his car.  
“Why can't one of the others drive?” Mikey insisted.  
“Who do you suggest?” Ray cried, setting the case down on the Plymouth’s hood, “Andy and Ryan are unconscious and Frank probably has a concussion.”  
“I could drive,” Brendon cut in nervously, looking between Mikey and Ray through the deluge.  
“Fuck, this isn't happening,” Frank muttered, climbing into the truck‘s passenger seat.  
“No way, Brendon, you’re hurt,” Ray decided, “And in case anyone’s forgotten, you’re still a vampire. The hospital staff will take one look at you bleeding all over their floor and they’ll want to help you and how are you going to explain yourself? You have to stay here.”  
“Guys, can you hurry this up? Andy and Ryan are literally dying over here,” Frank shouted from the truck, “We’ve gotta go!”  
Shaking his head in frustration, Mikey slammed his fist against the side of the truck before climbing in after Frank and ramming the keys into the ignition. The engine roared to life under the booming thunder and the heavy vehicle peeled away from the curb and sped away into the night.

“Thank god for that,” Ray muttered, picking up the explosives case to check it was still watertight. Brendon spat into the floodwaters and shivered in his bloodstained sweater. His wounds had finally stopped bleeding but he still felt weak and sore. “Okay, pal,” Ray said brightly, nodding at the young vampire through the downpour, “Let’s get this done.”  
“What are we doing exactly?” Brendon asked, splashing clumsily after the New Jersey hunter back towards the crumbling tunnel entrance.  
Ray smiled and his eyes reflected the lightning flashing overhead, “No sacrificial altar means no access to the dark energy pool for the vampires, right? So we’re going to cut them off.”

***  
A punishing fiery heat burned into Patrick's skin and fried his brain, hotter than anything he'd ever experienced before even in high summer. Hell really was here.The temperature in the mausoleum and tunnels had sky-rocketed and was cooking the chamber in a way that was nearly unbearable. It looked like the sun itself had appeared in the middle of the tomb and the fiery blaze of supernatural energy was blinding Patrick's eyes and burning his lungs every time he took a breath. He wanted desperately to be away from this torturous heat but he couldn’t move. He was drained to the point of exhaustion and felt like his brain was boiling in his skull. His clothes were soaked in sweat and his arms and legs were so heavy they must have turned into lead. He was too dizzy and weak to get up and he doubted Gerard could either. 

Squinting fearfully into the dazzling sea of light and power before him, he could just about see the standing figures of Pete and Animus as they battled to the death. Both vampires seemed immune to the furnace-like conditions of the tomb and were concentrating all their attention on trying to nuke each other into dust with blasts of dark-energy power. It was from their outstretched hands that the suffocating heat and light came and as they matched each other's attacks the blaze blew up in rolling waves exploding in the air and producing more and more heat and danger. Their mystical fire-fight would soon fill the entire room and the tunnel beyond - no doubt killing Patrick and Gerard when it did.

The problem was that the two vampires seemed evenly matched with an apparently limitless supply of powerful energies trapped inside their quivering, shining bodies so every time Animus launched a fresh bolt of liquid lightning towards Pete, Pete shot at it with one of his own and the two streams of power collided in mid-air, splitting apart into spirals of fiery light that roared recklessly through the room. 

Trembling weakly as his head throbbed with heatstroke, Patrick moved his sore eyes to glance at Gerard and through a blur of sweat and heat, he saw the older hunter lying passed out on the ground. They really were going to die here! Where the hell was Ray? 

Squinting back into the searing brightness of the tomb Patrick was heartbroken to see that Pete appeared to be weakening under Animus’s latest assault. A heavy blast of scarlet and orange power hit his friend squarely in the chest and caused him to stagger backwards into a wall where he was hit by several more blasts of crackling, spitting energy. Grimacing with pain and rage, Pete hunched forwards and took a heaving breath as his eyes bled black tears down his face. He looked doomed and Patrick felt a sick surge of panic rising in his throat as his eyes stung with fresh grief. He didn't want to watch his best friend die!

Then somehow Pete found the strength to straighten up and raise his shaking hands again and with gritted fangs he unleashed a shimmering bolt of crimson lightning that flew over Animus’s claws right into the inky depths of the demon lord’s hood! And Animus screamed. 

Like a thousand nails scratching a thousand blackboards, the vampire ruler’s agonised shriek rocketed through the mausoleum and sent shivers of needles running through Patrick’s body as his ears rang with pain. The burning whirls of energy cooking and scorching the air suddenly dimmed and faded as Pete absorbed them back into his body and then redirected them at Animus in a narrow, constant stream of attack, and the temperature in the vault fell by several merciful degrees. Pete’s whole body was trembling with the strain of maintaining the unrelenting river of precision lightning as his eyes melted in black rivers down his pained face but somehow he managed to keep up the attack without stopping even for an instant and Animus’ screams went on and on – the outraged cries of a demon losing his immortal life. 

Hardly daring to believe it, Patrick watched Pete stubbornly advance on Animus, drowning the demon lord in a stream of fresh blue energy that finally silenced his screams and brought the king of the vampires to his knees. Spellbound by the battle, Patrick was startled when a flash of movement from the other side of the room caught his eye: he’d completely forgotten that Beckett was still here.

Staggering to his feet with his wrist's stump dripping, Beckett stared aghast at the other vampires, his pale face etched with horror and outrage. Snarling viciously, he spit blood at the oven-baked floor and turned to stumble away towards the crumbling exit. Patrick fearfully watched him approach, his attention pulled away from the battle for a moment, and he didn’t see Pete glance up from Animus and fix his black eyes on Beckett’s retreating back. He also didn’t see Pete raise one of his shimmering hands towards his mortal enemy. But he definitely saw a purple bullet of dark power slam into Beckett’s back and explode out his chest in a shower of blood as it shattered his shrivelled heart and turned his body into ashes.

Open-mouthed, Patrick felt a sudden calm in the smoky air as he gazed with surprise and relief at Beckett’s remains. The Master vampire who had tormented him and his friends for so long, who had abused Pete, tortured Brendon, kidnapped Ryan and given the order to kill Joe, was finally nothing but dust. Beckett was dead and Pete had killed him. Pete’s vengeance was satisfied. It was finally over. Almost. 

As the heat eased away and the vault dimmed towards darkness, Patrick found that he had the strength to move his arms again and he wiped the sweat and tears from his eyes as the blaze of power in the mausoleum shrank and dwindled to a small basketball-sized blue sphere hovering just above Pete’s outstretched palm. The battle was at an end and Pete was shaking and pale from the massive toll the fight had taken on him. Blood trickled from his nose and ears and his eyes had lost their mystical black appearance but were full of red and running down his face in gooey crimson tears. He looked completely blind.

Fortunately, Animus was in a much worse condition. Lying on the heat-blasted marble the demon had thrown back his hood in a last desperate attempt to claim victory over Pete by revealing his soul-shredding face to the younger vampire but the glistening blue glow from the sphere of light mercifully washed out Animus’s features. 

With one quivering hand, Pete magically suspended the energy sphere in mid-air and with his other hand he appeared to be keeping Animus still in some way, preventing the demon lord from raising his clawed hands for a final attack.

Patrick watched anxiously, holding his breath as Pete closed his bleeding eyes and raised his dirt-streaked face towards the ceiling. A moment passed and then the young vampire looked sharply down and released the crackling blue sphere into the air where it dropped like a stone onto Animus. The demon lord’s body dissolved with a bang into a billowing smog of ashes and blue smoke and just like that the monster was dead. 

***  
The last sparks of mystic energy died with Animus and the tomb plunged into a deep sudden darkness. 

With the battle finally over, Pete felt his last shreds of strength leaving his body like water down a drain and he collapsed exhausted and trembling on the floor, too weak to even cry from the pain of his injuries. He felt completely and utterly wrecked and shattered and his head was split apart with pain. Despite the darkness, he knew that he was blind and it wasn’t hard to guess that the pounding forces of energy that had pummelled through him during the battle had destroyed his eyes and butchered his insides. Blood filled his nose and bubbled up his throat and even though a faint heat still hovered in the scorched air, he was shivering with cold. It was over now. He was dying. But at least he had taken Beckett and Animus with him, and that thought gave him some comfort as the whispering darkness came for his soul at last and he drifted away.

***  
By the time Ray and Brendon managed to drag the explosives back through the caved-in tunnels, both the tremors underground and the storm outside had ceased. The night was black and silent and the secret tunnels were nothing but a grave once more.

Using a flashlight they found their way back to the old tomb and found it musty with fading heat and the scent of death and emptiness and swamped in inky shadows. Patrick was crouched in the doorway, so dazed and dehydrated that he could barely stand or speak, and Gerard was unconscious until Brendon woke him by squeezing rainwater from his soaked sweater onto his face. Ray found Pete inside the mausoleum lying motionless on the cracked floor in a sea of blood and ashes.

***  
The explosives were set on a timer and they detonated just as the weary group reached Ray's car outside. A muffled boom set the ground trembling under their feet and ripples splashing through the puddles and the earth over the tomb’s location bulged and spewed a few chunks of grassy muck into the tranquil starry sky. Then Grey’s Hill fell silent at last.

***  
The local doctors and nurses did a good job of fixing up the wounded without asking too many questions about their unusual injuries and Andy and Ryan fully recovered with only a few scars – physical and mental - to remind them of their ordeal. 

Meanwhile Ray and Mikey took Pete and Brendon back to base and force-fed them blood to kick-start their vampire healing abilities. By some miracle Pete was revived and was soon back to normal, although his vision was left weak and blurry and the whites of his eyes had turned permanent red. 

Four days later, the hunters gathered at the cemetery again, but not for a battle this time: for a funeral. Joe’s family had been killed in a vampire attack several years ago so the service was kept small and simple with only his fellow hunters in attendance. He was buried in the warm sunshine that had been shining non-stop since the end of the storm so Pete and Brendon had to stay home for the service and wait until nightfall to pay their respects. 

After the priest had finished the eulogy, Ryan and the New Jersey hunters drifted slowly away from the freshly turned grave and small wooden cross until Andy and Patrick were left there alone. 

“He was so brave,” Patrick said in a trembling voice, turning his grey fedora over and over in his hands as he stared tearfully at the new grave, “He knew what had to be done and he did it, no matter what. When I watched him in the fight at the church he never showed any fear. He never backed down. I'll never be a brave as Joe.”  
“I miss him so much,” Andy whispered, “After everything we went through together, for him to be… taken away, it's just so cruel! God, I never thought it would be Joe who died, I never thought it would be h-him that got taken away from us. I just assumed he’d always be there, y'know?”  
“I guess we all did.”  
“I don't think he even knew how much I cared about him,” Andy sighed, wiping his eyes with a tattooed hand, “Now he never will.”  
Sighing softly, Patrick looked up at the wide blue sky and spied the chalky ghost of the moon sleeping high above them in the sunshine. He couldn't wait to leave this sad sorry town behind.

***  
ONE WEEK LATER…

“So where are you guys headed?” Gerard asked, slinging the last of his stuff into the back of Mikey's truck, “You could always come hang out in Jersey for a while.”  
“Maybe,” Patrick said, gazing up at the stars shining brightly over the factory yard, “There's plenty of other places needing protection from vamps.”  
Andy sighed faintly and folded his arms, leaning against the side of his car, “I'm not even sure I want to be a hunter anymore.”  
“Don't say that, man, you should stay in the game,” Pete said, looking up from his starbucks cup of pigs blood, “You're good at it.”  
“That's high praise coming from you,” Andy smiled.  
“You guys should definitely come with us,” Frank said excitedly, moonlight glinting off the studs on his jacket, “With Beckett dead and the local vampires clearing out of here this town can do without you, but where we live it still sucks.”  
“There’s a lot of battles to be fought in Jersey,” Ray agreed, “And all over the country these days in fact. We could follow trouble around.”  
“If you stay on the road you never get bored,” Patrick remarked.  
“It does sound tempting,” Andy admitted, “And I’m more than happy to leave this town behind for good, too many bad memories here.”  
“Wherever you guys go can I come?” Ryan piped up from where he was sitting beside Brendon on the hood of Ray’s Plymouth.  
“Yeah, me too?” Brendon asked hopefully.  
Mikey nodded, “Sure. We have enough vehicles. There's room for everyone.”  
“We’d make a pretty intimidating group with all of us together,” Gerard added, lighting a cigarette, “More like an army.”  
“What do you think, Pete?” Patrick asked.  
Pete looked thoughtful for a moment and then smiled slightly, showing his fangs as his red eyes glowed with starlight. “Sounds like a plan. Let's go.”

 

THE END


End file.
